The River Runs
by Lightfall
Summary: While you still live in the hearts of others, you can never truly die. The river washes the blood away, the world forgets, but those 24 children, taken in tribute, they will never die. The river runs, and they are claimed, but they live on. This is their story.
1. Prologue: Capitol Sunrise

The sun rises over the Capitol, hazy morning light illuminating the city in its colours and its facets.

All over the city, men and women go to work, children go to school, all of them passing the billboards and the banners announcing in vivid colour the upcoming Hunger Games.

Many of those workers , who kiss their spouses and their children when they leave, become instruments in the Games.

They are weeks away still, but the Gamemakers have worked on it for a period of several years, along with hundreds, if not thousands, of other workers, all with a part to play.

Heron White is up early, leaving the house before his children are even dressed. He's a designer overseeing the final construction of the catacombs under the arena, and he'll need every minute if he's to get out to the arena in time, because they'll be starting work early in order to make the deadline.

Demetria Vincent leaves her house early too. She barely has time to shower and wash her dark green hair, then slip into her work clothes and leave a note for her girlfriend before she has to leave to catch her ride. A recent graduate, barely more than a schoolgirl in her overseers eyes, she's a technician monitoring plant growth and distribution in the leadup to the Games.

Ambrosius Harp can't even tell his family about his job. They know he's a junior Gamemaker, but his work stays at work, and his wife can only wonder. He's understandably stressed this close to the games, leaving in a worry about the meeting today.

Ferra Blackwell has been awake all night, and drinks a large cup of coffee before shooting a news segment in the City Circle. She sits in a folding chair as a stylist does her screen makeup and reads over her notes for the section they're shooting outside the Remake Centre at 9am.

Chloe and Rufus Gruen go to work together on foot, before they split up to work in respectively marketing and computer tech – Chloe is in charge of organising which electronic billboards can be rented for promotional teaser shots of sections of the arena, while Antonius works for transmissions, a technician managing the broadcasts to the districts in the leadup to this year's Games.

Eugenia Finch makes her way to work in good time – she has to be at work early enough to ready the boardrooms and cater to the needs of the Gamemakers in their strategy meeting. The whole place is a hive of activity - Avoxes, workers, city officials. The whole city is abuzz right now, what with the Games coming up. Those who aren't frantically preparing are worrying about the extra duties that come with them, or simply anticipating the start of another year's Games.

The city will become a hive of colourful activity over the day and into the night. The city is never silent, and always colourful.

Its citizens await the Games with bated breath.


	2. District One: Determination

**A Note From Your Author**

Welcome, my lovelies. Welcome to the 60th Hunger Games. Excited? Of course. But not _quite_ yet; it's time to introduce our tributes, and on that note I will shamelessly plug District 15 as a way to more legally collect some lovely characters to slaughter.

Enough of the advertising, let's get on with it, and many thanks to shadowed flight for this darling tribute. She's a wonderful character, and I love her background - it was all so wonderfully done, I hardly had to do anything with her except write. So props to you and thanks again for letting me write about her.

On with the show.

**~ Madeleine**

* * *

><p><em>Ivory Kingston, Eighteen Years, District One<em>

The alarm clock shatters a peculiar dream in which I float in a bubble across my district, watching the people go by, the noises of the district silenced by the warm liquid of the bubble. I lie curled up, as fragile as an unborn child, when suddenly the alarm pierces my mind and I wake up.

The alarm continues, shrill and piercing. It's an old clock, clunky and grey and ugly, and my parents often wonder aloud as to why I don't replace it – it isn't as if we couldn't afford a new alarm clock, one with more functions or able to wake me up at different times on school days and weekends. The reason I keep my old one would become very rapidly obvious if they knew what I'm like in the mornings.

My hand shoots out from under the covers, swinging wildly at the clock, trying to turn it off. _Shutupshutupshutup._

Of course, I miss horribly and then knock the damned thing onto the ground, where it keeps screaming at me. _Damn._

I drag myself out of bed and tread on it, after which it's _still_ sounding the alarm. I hop around for a bit, then bend down and turn the switch off.

See? Old and ugly but well-built enough to withstand my attacks long enough for me to get out of bed.

I stumble into the bathroom to wake myself up further with a shower. I just stand there under the water for quite a while before realising I'm wasting water and I get to the main point of a shower. Today is the reaping and, if my father gets his way, then today I will be presented to literally all of Panem as a representative of my district. In that case, I want to look my best.

I towel off and dry my hair, the put on the reaping outfit I prepared last night. I shrug into the silver dress and struggle for a few moments as I try to zip it up. The zipper goes all the way from the small of my back to an unreachable point between my shoulderblades.

I cock my head to one side. Judging by the sound of cupboard doors opening in Cascade's room, I gather she's awake, and trying to decide what to wear for the reaping. I bought this dress last week, but Cas never plans in advance. She's a spur of the moment type person.

I give up on trying to zip myself up. "Cas?" A pause, and then a reply muffled by the wall.

"Yeah?" She doesn't sound groggy, despite probably just having woken up. Typical Cas.

"Can you zip me up?"

The door to her room opens. She's wearing shorts and a singlet, her curly brown hair ruffled and tangled. "Sure," she says, brightly.

I turn around, and she zips me up. "You look nice," she says. "Can I do your hair?"

About half an hour later, Cascade has pinned my hair up, with a couple of wavy, white-blonde strands framing my face. She's also done my makeup, something I would rather not do myself. I rarely wear makeup, seeing as I've almost always been either at school or training, but since I've finished school, lately I've been putting on a bit of eyeliner or dark mascara when I go out. I take a look in the mirror. I'm still pale, there's not changing that, but she's used a little bit of pink blusher on my cheekbones. I look honestly quite nice. A little unexpected, but nice.

I turn to Cas. She's still in her pajamas, her hair messy, unbrushed. "You should get ready, too."

She smiles. "Eventually. I'm hungry, wanna eat?"

We go downstairs, where my mother is already awake and cooking breakfast. She turns around at the sound of us coming down the stairs. She hugs us both, because that's the sort of person she is, hugging her children every morning, especially on the day of the reaping. She knows as well as I do that Cas will never go to the Hunger Games. Even in the reaping, she has less chance of being selected than I do, and even if she is chosen there are more than enough older girls, myself included, who will volunteer for the honour of representing the district. It's me that she's really worrying about. My father has always insisted I train for the games, that it would be an honour to represent District One. But my mother never wanted me too. She honestly fears for my life, insisting that despite the fact that children who train for the games are far more likely to win, there's still a very real chance that I'll get killed if I volunteer.

When you compare us to other districts, where they fear the reaping and the kids are skinny and malnourished, the odds look good for a volunteer girl from District One who's trained most of her life. But the last decade or so have been bad for Career tributes, since the Quell. The games are just entertainment for the Capitol after all, and apparently non-Career winners are fashionable. My mother is worried for my life.

I barely remember the Quarter Quell, as I was only eight at the time, and I've never seen reruns of it on TV. My father has it on tape, though, as one of the ways we used to train, before I was old enough to use weapons properly, was to watch the Games and analyse strategies.

After about half an hour, my mother, Cas and I have eaten breakfast, and Cas is just about finished getting ready when my father comes downstairs. He turns to me.

"You volunteering today?"

I stare at him, and answer quietly. "Maybe."

He snorts. "You better. Not like she's going to." Cascade is already in the other room. This is shaping up to be another shouting match. By _match_ I mean he shouts and I stare him down, while my sister panics and hides. Sometimes, when it gets really bad, I join her and we just hold eachother as my mother tries to calm him down.

It turns out to be more of a glare in the general direction of where Cas _was_ than an actual shouting match, and my mother eventually gets us all out of the house together. As soon as we're in public, my father is firm but fair and never shouts. He doesn't need to – he's an imposing man, and people have a tendency to do what he says.

* * *

><p>We make it to the square with ten minutes to spare, barely early enough. They film the reapings and broadcast them live in the Capitol, where you can watch them all in sequence. District One has the earliest timeslot, starting at 8:30. It's always important to be on time because the square fills up fast.<p>

As we enter, a Peacekeeper takes our names. They like to use the reaping as a sort of census, as there's no staying home unless you physically can't leave the house, such as the time when my sister was eight and feverish. That was my first reaping. I remember just about nothing about it except that Cas and mother got a particularly scary visit from the Peacekeepers afterward to check that there was a reason they were absent.

I walk Cas over to where the fourteen-year-old girls stand, lost in memories, until she disengages herself and goes to stand with her friends. Cas has about ten billion friends, both girls and boys, in direct contrast to me – over the years, most of the people I know have been training for the games, and, as such, I've avoided familiarity with boys in case I have to kill one of them in the games. Girls I manage to push away just fine with my _lovely_ personality.

I do have one friend left, a skinny girl named Luster Riverwood, and she hugs me tightly as I slip into a group of eighteen-year-old girls. Many of these girls have the eager look of someone who will volunteer at the drop of a hat, or rather the call from the escort. This is, of course, the reason they put the eighteens at the front – so they can reach the stage first in the case of a free-for-all.

They all know me from group training, and regard me with suspicious looks. Luster drags me in, a note of concern in her voice.

"I don't think you should do it. Remember last year?"

Last year's Games are part of my mother's fear. The whole Career pack was killed by one tribute from district nine, a little whisp of a girl, barely fifteen, who turned out to be vicious with an axe. I shudder at the memory.

Luster, like my mother and sister, is less than keen for me to volunteer. She never trained. Her parents are insanely rich, whereas my mother is a violinmaker and my father works a nothing job in the furniture company.

Luster is talking to me, quickly and quietly. I don't hear her exact words, but it's something along the lines of insisting I not go.

For the first time I realise how easy it would be to just _not_ volunteer, to just let someone else get there first. This is my last year and father would never have to know.

I push the thought aside. I need to do this, not for my father or for the glory. But to prove that I can enter the Games and come out alive. I know I can. And now no one can change my mind.

"Ivory, are you even listening to me?"

I hear Luster clearly for the first time. "Yeah."

"I really don't think you should do this. What if you –"

"I'll be fine," I insist.

And that's it. We watch the chairs on the stage fill with the Capitol Escort, Filli Schoen, a man with ludicrous orange hair and a dark blue suit, the mayor and the past winners from the district. One of the younger victors is Luster's brother, Granite, who apparently is the mentor for the male tribute this year by the roster. According to the same roster, the mentor for the female tribute is Lazuli Teive. She won sixteen years ago after her allies and enemies alike were killed in an acid rain. That year was particularly bizarre.

The mayor reads the history of Panem like he does every year. I can feel the anticipation in the crowd, although it is completely silent as the mayor explains the war and the treachery and finally the Hunger Games.

I hear the murmurs in the crowd as the mayor finishes reading, and returns to his seat. Filli smooths his hair and steps toward the microphone, and speaks into it in his irritating voice. It's worse than than usual Capitol accent on account of its pitch, which would be ridiculously high even for a six-year-old girl.

He does his spiel, and I have my hands over my ears in a vain attempt to block out his irritating voice. He moves toward the glass ball that contains the girls' slips, and I unblock my ears by necessity.

Filli reaches into the glass ball, digs around a bit then pulls out a name. Everyone knows that this is mostly a formality, as there will almost certainly be a girl willing to volunteer.

He raises the slip of folded paper above his head, then unfolds it and reads in his ridiculous voice: "Tassel Hillman!"

Tassel is apparently a skinny girl who extracts herself from a group of fourteens with considerable dignity for her age, and proceeds onto the stage. She isn't scared, yet.

"Excellent," Filli intones as she climbs up the left stairs. "Now, Tassel, shall I call for volunteers?"

Tassel nods.

"Alrighty then," Filli says brightly, turning to the audience. A pause here, for effect, or perhaps to prepare himself for the onslaught that will surely come next.

"Are there any volunteers?"

The square explodes. Luster tries to grab my arm, but ends up grabbing Varnish Hathaway instead. I slip in front of a stocky girl I remember being hit by in training and find myself at the foot of the stairs first.

I turn my head, see my father urging me on from the sidelines, and I make my decision. _I will prove myself. Not to you. To everyone_.

I take the stairs two at a time.

"Well, hello there," Filli says. "You would be?"

"Ivory," I manage. "Ivory Kingston."

Filli grins, revealing pearly white teeth inlaid with tiny red gems.

"Let's hear it for Ivory Kingston, then!"

Much of the square erupts into applause, save a few surly girls still standing by the stairs. I note Luster's silence, and know that if I could find my sister in the crowd I would find her similarly quiet. My father is still gruff but obviously glad I've volunteered. My mother is pale.

I stand on the stage, feeling the cameras on me, and can only watch as Filli reaches into the other glass ball, to decide the name of the boy who will be my rival.

He plunges his hand into the ball, and swirls around for a name. He draws out a slip of paper and unfolds it.

He clears his throat, and even that noise irritates me. And then he reads out the name. "Basil Saff!"

To my surprise, I recognise the boy, who's standing in a clump of sixteen-year-olds. I've seen him in training, despite the fact he's a couple of years younger than me, and I remember one specific incident where he had to be stitched up after an accident with a spear. But most pointedly, he's the spitting image of a man sitting up on stage, Aviar Saff, a past victor of the Games.

As he climbs the stairs, he appears deep in thought. He reaches the stage, and Filli smiles broadly. "Wonderful. Now, Basil, shall I call for volunteers?"

Again the anticipation. But Basil has trained for the Games, even if he is only sixteen. It's unlikely he'd turn down this opportunity.

He glances to the side of the square where the girls are assembled. He has a girlfriend, then. Someone who'll miss him if he dies, but who might also look badly on him if he chickens out.

"No, thanks," he says. "I'm in."

The assembled people cheer. The mayor reads the Treaty of Treason, and Basil and I shake hands. I look into his eyes, and know that if I win, then today is the last time his girlfriend will see him alive.

I shudder as they lead us into the Justice Building for our goodbyes.

* * *

><p>My sister is tiny, more than a head shorter than me, and skinny as a rake.<p>

That doesn't mean that she can't easily knock you off your feet when she hugs you.

She throws herself at me as she enters the sitting room in the Justice Building. My mother is right behind her. Cas is obviously upset, and my mother is trying to keep herself in check for my sake, which I appreciate. I don't want to doubt my decision.

Cas puts her hands on my shoulders. It strikes me, suddenly, how small she is. Just a little girl, really. "You come back, okay?"

I nod. I sit down, seeking the support that I'm not getting from my tearful sister and silent mother.

Cas is insistent. "You win and you come back, okay?"

I nod again, suddenly exhausted. The scope of what I'm going to have to do is suddenly hitting me. Surely I was mad to volunteer for this.

"Wait, you don't have a token, do you?"

I look up. Cas is still looking concerned, which is understandable. But she makes a good point. They let you take one thing of your own into the arena, one thing to remind you of home, one thing to help you hold onto what you were before the Games.

"I can get you something," she says. "I can make it home and back in time, what do you want me to get? That necklace you wore to dinner at Luster's house last week? What about that bracelet -"

"Here, have this."

My mother, speaking for the first time, is holding out a glinting something to me. I look closer, and I recognise the ring she wears on her right hand, a slim silver thing, inlaid with tiny emeralds. Her parents gave it to her, as I can remember, when she got married. The stone she was named for.

I take the ring, turn it over in my hands. It's designed for someone with slimmer fingers than me, like my mother or my sister. My mother, a violinmaker, has slender fingers, and my sister takes after her in many respects – they share the curly brown hair and the slim build, even their sweet personalities. I suppose this means that I take after my father, but I try not to think about that.

I slip the ring onto my pinky, the only finger it will fit on easily. I hold my hand up to the light. It seems like such a small thing to take with you: a single strip of metal around your finger. And yet, in that moment, I wouldn't have wanted to take anything else.

I startle my mother by embracing her. "Thank you."

I let her go when the Peacekeeper comes to escort them out. "Oh, and Cas?"

She turns away from the door. "Yes?"

"I will come back," I say. "I promise."

I sit on the couch for a couple of minutes, wondering if I'll get any other visitors. The door opens suddenly, revealing, surprisingly, my father.

"Ivory."

I freeze. "Dad."

He just stands there, and we stare at eachother across the room.

"You have to win."

I raise my eyebrows. I'm not sure whether he's concerned for my safety or for his reputation.

"Win, or this'll mean nothing.

"You'll mean nothing."

And with that ever-so-comforting remark, he's gone.

Sheesh. Talk about harsh. I mean, it's true. If I don't win, I'll be dead. But still.

My next visitor is infinitely more comforting. Luster is sombre as she enters, escorted by the Peacekeeper. Unlike Cas, she doesn't tackle me, just silently wraps her arms around me.

Her voice is quet. "Please come back, Ivy. Please."

I bite my lip. "I'll try."

After my time is all up and Luster is taken away, they escort both Basil and I to the station, where we're loaded onto the train that'll be our home until we reach the Capitol. He doesn't seem afraid, but he's grim and silent.

He's a strong guy, and what I've seen of him in training suggests that he'd make a valuable ally.

I certainly hope I don't have to kill him.


	3. District One: Decisions

**A Note From Your Author**

Well hello again. Have some more District One, and thanks to the wonderful whisperasweknowit for this dude. He's a pretty interesting guy in my opinion, and I enjoyed fleshing him out, and his friends are fun, too.

On with the show.

**~ Madeleine**

* * *

><p><em>Basil Saff, Age Sixteen, District One<em>

I go for runs in the morning. It helps to wake me up and warm me up and get ready for training and school. Ruby hates it when I get to training already sweaty, but I don't really care – I'm just going to get gross anyway, so I may as well get a bit of exercise.

Reaping day is no different. I'm up early on the big day, and by the time I've done my run and gotten back to the house, my Dad's awake and already eating. I shower quickly and dress in the shirt and long trousers I set out last night. I set my shoes and socks aside, preferring to stay in my bare feet.

I sit at the kitchen table and Dad slides some bacon onto my plate. The run has left me hungry and the bacon is delicious – I'm done in minutes. I get myself some yoghurt, and I finish by chopping up a green apple and eating it, slice by slice. My dad scowls at me when I use my penknife, but I can't be bothered to get a knife from the drawer.

"You'll hurt yourself mucking around like that," he says.

"Look, I've done it a million times," I say, slicing the seeds out of a segment of apple, and popping into my mouth. "See? Fine."

My dad rolls his eyes, but doesn't say anything else.

I check the clock. It's only a few minutes past six, and the reaping's not until 8:30, although my father likes to get there early, because he has to sit on the stage with the other victors, and it looks pretty bad if he's late. Still, I have at least an hour and half before we have to leave.

I could go to Ruby's house, I guess, and kill time, but she's probably primping in preparation for the reaping. I always tell her that she doesn't need to make the effort unless she plans on volunteering, because no one's going to be looking at her in particular otherwise, but she looks at me funny and I feel like I've broken some kind of code of honour or something.

I'll probably meet Aaron and Emeral, then, in the usual place – under the bridge. I pull on my socks with considerable difficulty and lace up my shoes.

"I'm going out," I announce. "Meeting the guys. See you at the square."

Dad looks up. "Alright. See you then."

My Dad and I rarely disagree, which is to say we rarely talk. Just the basic mechanics of "How was your day", "Work hard at training" and "Don't be out past eleven". He works hard most of the time, and I suppose he cares about what I do, but he never really shows it. Most of the time he just tells me to train hard. Today is no different, I guess.

I wander down to the bridge, and I'm not surprised when Emeral and Aaron are already there. Aaron is reading the graffiti on the underside of the brickwork, but he's shorter than me and he has to stand on a pile of bricks to get closer. Emeral is making some joke about it – he's always picking on Aaron's height. Emeral's a bit of a jerk sometimes, but we've been friends for ages, since we were little kids starting school. He's not that bad really.

I duck under the railing and wander over. Aaron almost trips over scrambling down the pile of bricks, and dusts himself off. The sleeves of his dress shirt are rolled up.

"You volunteering today? Emeral bet me you wouldn't."

I roll my eyes in Emeral's direction.

He grins. "Well, you're not gonna, are you? You always said you wanted to wait until you were eighteen."

Which is true. My father and I had it planned out. I'd volunteer at eighteen to give me the maximum amount of training. It made sense. The trainers at the fitness centre where most of us did out group training told me I could enter sooner, but I figured I'd wait.

"Nah, it doesn't matter. It's not like you're going to, anyway."

Aaron laughs at this. It's true, Emeral never even trained. He's actually really smart; he'll probably end up as a doctor or something. An irritating prettyboy doctor. I pity his patients.

Emeral flushes. It's one of the weird things he does. It's hilarious, but Aaron never picks at him for it, which is surprising, given Emeral picks at him over everything. Aaron would rather be armwrestling or jumping on the furniture. He was a hyperactive kid, and he never really got over it.

Emeral checks his watch to change the subject. "'S seven already. We should go into town."

He's right, of course. Walking, it'll take us a while to get to the main square and it always gets crowded fast. Aaron ties his shoelaces up, and we duck back under the railing, and head into town.

We pass a lot of people on the way – the town centre is already busy in preparation for the reaping, although shops are closed. There are decorations hanging between the townhouses and the shops, pennants and baubles. I've always found it a bit garish, but this _is_ a sporting event, an annual thing that you're supposed to get excited about. I guess in my training I've kind of forgotten what it is to most people in the district.

By the time we get to Main Square, it's already filling up. We never all fit in the square, and the adults and younger children who come late watch as the reaping is televised live on screens in Fountain Square.

The amount of noise in the square is pretty ridiculous – a couple thousand teenagers all jammed into one space? Chatter central. I must admit, the girls are the worst offenders – _everything_ is a possible topic of conversation, from what all the other girls are wearing to the weather. I mean sheesh. Who the hell cares that Isabel wore that dress to a party last week?

I spot Ruby standing with a bunch of her friends, who seem to be a study in every irritating quality girls can have. She turns and I try and wipe all the thoughts of how annoying her friends are from my mind in case it shows on my face.

She smiles as she sees me, and I can't help but grin back. "Hey," she says. "How've you been?"

She's been busy for the last few days on something for school, and we've barely spoken even at training. I try and figure out an answer that doesn't tell her I've been enjoying myself without her. "Decent."

"Good to hear. So, you're not volunteering today, are you? Because I heard that like five or six or the eighteen-year-old guys are dead set on it."

"Nah," I say with what I hope is nonchalance. "I'm gonna wait till I'm eighteen, get the most training time possible."

She put her hands on my shoulders, then joins her hands around my neck. There's something about her fingers on the back of my neck, something about the touch that tingles.

"Alright, then," she says, cocking her head to the side. "We should…catch up. Seeing I haven't really seen you for a week almost."

I catch myself staring at her, not really listening, and shake myself. "Uh…alright."

She smiles. "Okay then. See you then." And she slips away to rejoin her irritating friends.

I'm pretty bemused by the whole thing, but frankly I'm just glad to see her. I was beginning to think she was avoiding me, honestly. Girls are freaking impossible.

Aaron and Emeral are grinning by the time I get back to them. Aaron snorts. "Skills, man."

"Shut up," I say. "We better squish in."

The sixteens are already fairly squashed. "They need to build a bigger bloody square," Emeral groans. "It's freaking summer; I'm sweating like a pig here."

It's about time that we got started, and the chairs on stage are filling. The Capitol escort, Filli Schoen, and the mayor, Dale Hathaway, are already there, along with the numerous past victors, including my father. The mentor for the male tribute this year is, according to the program currently showing on the screens, Granite Riverwood, who won seven years ago. The female mentor is the somewhat famous Lazuli Tierce, winner of the 44th Hunger Games. That year was both bizarre and apparently a hit with the Capitol.

The chairs on stage fill, as does the square. We get compacted to the point where personal space is pretty much a joke.

At 8:30 exactly, the mayor reads the history of Panem as he does every year, listing the natural disasters and the wars, and the treachery that gave us the Hunger Games.

He reads the list of past victors from our district, living and dead. There are ten of them.

I'm pretty used to people looking my way when my father's name is read, and since they read the names in chronological order, I know when it's coming.

Once he's finished, Filli steps up to the podium, and speaks in the most irritating voice imaginable: "Ladies and Gentlemen, a very happy Hunger Games to you all!"

There's some applause. "Thank you, thank you, thank you for the absolutely _marvellous_ welcome. It's a pleasure, such a pleasure, to be here again, for the 60th Annual Games!"

Again, the applause. "Really, really, thank you…it's great to be here. Lovely to once again be here to select the tributes for this year's Games! Starting, of course, with our lovely ladies…"

He virtually skips over to where the glass ball containing the girl's names sits on the stage. Everyone knows the reaping's little more than a formality, but it goes along anyway, by protocol.

He swirls his hand around a fair bit, before drawing a slip out between two violently orange fingernails. He smooths it out, and reads in his high-pitched voice: "Tassel Hillman!"

Tassel, a fourteen-year-old, squeezes out between a few other girls, and makes her way to the stage. She isn't worried yet – pretty much safe in the knowledge that someone will take her place.

The crowd is perfectly silent, and Filli beams as the kid climbs the stairs. "Excellent, excellent. Now, Tassel, shall I call for volunteers?"

Tassel doesn't speak, but nods yes.

Filli beams. "Alrighty then," here a pause, to prepare himself for the chaos that almost always follows as several girls try and reach the stage. "Are there any volunteers?"

The previously silent crowd erupts into cheers as several older girls split from their age groups, and begin pushing through the crowd to the foot of the stairs. I can't see quite what's going on, given that the tallest guys are at the front, but eventually a girl who I vaguely remember from training climbs the stairs. I can't remember her name, only that she usually keeps to herself but is a damn good shot with a thrown knife.

She's quite striking, actually, and with her white-blonde hair pinned back, she's quite pale, and she looks good in her silver dress. She's almost as tall as me, and though she's slender, she packs some muscle. She could be a serious contender, and it's clear I'm not the only one thinking this. Much of the crowd is nodding their approval.

"Well, hello there," Filli says. "You would be?"

"Ivory," the girls says.

Ivory, that's it.

"Ivory Kingston," she continues.

"Let's hear it for Ivory Kingston, then!" Filli exclaims, and the square applauds.

Filli leaves Ivory standing on one side of the stage and proceeds to the ball containing the boys' names. He plunges his hand into the pool of slips and digs around for a couple of seconds, before drawing out one slip of folded paper. He unfolds it, smooths it out as best he can with his ludicrous fingernails, then clears his throat with a tiny cough and says:

"Basil Saff!"

What.

Aaron turns to look at me, a funny expression on his face. "Up you go, then."

I squeeze out of the clump of sixteens and make my way to the stage, my mind running about a mile a minute. Should I do it? Go to the Games? I've trained for this most of my life. And besides, what's to say someone won't beat me to the stage in two years' time?

I climb the stairs, and Filli smiles broadly, revealing extremely white teeth embedded with tiny red gems. "Wonderful."

I cringe at the pitch of his voice. It's somehow less nasty over the speakers, but up close it sounds like a five-year-old girl who's been breathing in party balloons.

His tone is patronizing, too. "Wonderful. Now, Basil, shall I call for volunteers?"

I should really do this; I may not get another chance. I may not be as mature or as attractive as Ivory, but as a Career kid from District One, I've got an edge in the survival and sponsorship states, and that's always going to give you an advantage over kids from poorer districts.

I bite my lip. I should, but do I really want to? My father would want me to. For the final confirmation, I glance at Ruby. She's pretty calm, or at least keeping herself that way. She mouths two words. _Good Luck._

I turn back to Filli. "No, thanks. I'm in."

The assembled people applaud, Filli sits down, and the mayor comes to the podium and reads the Treaty of Treason. The applause dies away as he reads the dreary thing. It goes on for several minutes, and by the time he's finished people are itching to leave.

The mayor gets Ivory and me to shake hands, which we do, and I'm surprised by the strength of her grip. She's either going to make a great ally or a fearsome enemy. I make a mental note not to get on her bad side.

* * *

><p>I always wondered who'd come to my goodbyes, to be teary or proud or give advice. My father, obviously, and Ruby. Aaron and Emeral? I dunno. The guys from training? Probably not. They might be jealous.<p>

My father is first to arrive. He's gruff, as usual, but proud. He tries to give me advice, mostly to make alliances only if I'm sure they won't go sour, and tells me to listen to my mentor. He gives me a rough hug, something a bit unusual, but it's sort of nice.

Ruby is next, which, I have to admit, is also pretty nice. As soon as she comes into the room, she throws her arms around me. She just hangs there for a few moments, and I feel like I should comfort her or something, and I'm just about to try stroking her hair or something, when she kisses me full on the lips.

The force of it surprises me, desperate, her arms still around my neck. I blink rather rapidly for a few seconds before I lean in, my hand finding the back of her neck with ease that comes more from instinct than practice.

She breaks away after a few moments, but stays close. A few strands of dark brown hair have fallen loose from her hairstyle, and I brush them behind her ear, something she always likes. She raises a hand to my throat, to the dark brown choker she gave me last year. "Wear this, will you?" She fiddles with the small ruby that hangs from the centre. "Keep me close to your heart, in the arena."

I nod. "Sure."

She smiles. "Well, good luck."

Ruby stands on tiptoe, and kisses me once on the forehead. Before I have the chance to say anything else, the Peacekeeper who's stationed outside my door comes to get her. Our time's up. I catch a glimpse of a somewhat teary girl leaving. One of Ivory's visitors.

The next people to arrive are, somewhat surprisingly, Emeral and Aaron. They don't say much, just wish me good luck and leave, but I'm glad they came. Today might be the last time I see them.

After our time for goodbyes is up, they escort Ivory and me to the station, and the train that will take us to the Capitol. As we pull out from the station, I stare at the district until we turn a bend and it vanishes from view behind the trees.

It occurs to me that when I return, I'll either be returning victorious or shipped back home in a box.


	4. District Two: Compensation

**A note from your author**

Well hi again. My thanks this time go to Her Royal Cheesiness for this wonderful tribute. I had a great time with him, he's just so fun to work with, and his backstory is excellent.

Anyway, enough of that, on with the show.

**~ Madeleine**

* * *

><p><em>Conor Lupis, Age Sixteen, District Two<em>

The sunrise is smoky orange against the outlines of the buildings. I sit at the window a while, watching. The district seems different in the morning, before the streets get crowded, the light like honey, filling in the cracks and glossing over the dust. The place never looks as clean as it does in the early mornings.

My dad's asleep – I can hear him snoring – so I wander downstairs to fix myself some breakfast. The clock on the wall says it's just gone five am, and even though it's always slow I've still got at least four hours before the reaping.

I munch a piece of toast and try to figure out what I'm gonna do all morning. I figure taking a shower will clear my head, even though I've been up for twenty minutes already and I'm feeling pretty clear. I agreed with Lis that we'd meet at 7:30 at her place, but I've got hours to go until then.

I finish my breakfast and go back upstairs to figure out what I'm gonna wear. My cupboard's a gigantic mess – it'll be a stretch just to find something that's not crumpled.

I pull out a pair of black pants, but when I go to put them on, my foot goes through the knee. I spend a couple of moments trying to get out of them and end up tripping over backwards in a stream of profanities.

My head comes down hard on the floor, and I lie there for a moment, dazed. I get up, struggle out of the pants and throw them aside in disgust.

I eventually settle on a slightly less problematic pair of blue trousers and a striped shirt which isn't dirty at all, just a little crumpled. I tuck it in, and then hunt around for my dress shoes on the floor of the cupboard.

The floorboards creak outside – my dad's awake. I subconsciously brace myself, standing up straighter automatically. Damn, is this what he's done to me? These last few years, it's like everything I do is assessed. Everything. I glance over at the photo hanging on the wall. She was beautiful, really, tall and elegant, with this sort of…otherness to her. When I was a kid, she told me that we were all cogs in the Capitol's machine, each of with a purpose, doing their bidding. Her voice was bitter, then, a side to her I only saw occasionally.

"Listen, Conor, baby, you just have to keep your head down," she would say, brushing a strand of reddish hair off her face. "If you don't, the machine won't run, and they'll _notice_. Do you understand?"

I was only a kid then, and I didn't understand, not really. "I suppose."

"It's important. Take what you're given and run with it. Remember, please. _Please_, Conor."

I was ten then, just a kid. I can see where she measured my height on the doorframe. Lines counting my birthdays. I run a finger up the length of the frame. And then I see one I never noticed before. A line a little below my shoulder height.

It's unmarked, but I know instantly what it is. It's _her_. That's how tall she was.

I'm taller than her now.

It's way above the last measurement, taken on my eleventh birthday, which is why I never noticed it before. She died only a few weeks after measuring me that day, and the measuring thing was something we always did together

I swallow a few times, trying not to think about it. My father is probably waiting for me to come downstairs, and I can't be overly emotional on reaping day. After all, I'm supposed to volunteer, aren't I? Then again, I was supposed to volunteer last year, and the year before that. I just never did.

I push open the door and go downstairs, passing three photos of my mother. One just of her, one of all three of us, her and father and me, and one of her and father on their wedding day. She's grinning like mad, absolutely gorgeous with long red hair and a white dress, and he's quietly beaming.

I walk into the kitchen, to find him sitting at the table picking at a piece of toast and taking occasional sips from a silver flask of who-knows-what. I shake my head. It's hard to reconcile this image of my father, this dishevelled, unshaven, out-of-work image of my father with the one I remember, the smiling man in the photo, the one who would laugh at the things I brought in from our garden, who brought his wife flowers and cooked for her.

He glances up, frowning. "Oh. It's you."

I nod, not sure what to say. Or what to do, for that matter. I don't know about anything anymore.

"You volunteering today?"

I wince. "Not sure."

He nods a few times. "Make sure you do it properly, then. Don't get beaten to the stage by some fourteen-year-old this time."

That kid died three days in, bitten by a poisonous spider. I felt pretty awful for telling my dad I wasn't fast enough, but I never really wanted to volunteer. It was always his idea. He decided when I was twelve that because mum's grandfather was a victor of the games almost sixty years ago, that she would have wanted me to become a Career tribute. I thought it was a bad idea, but I went along with it, because, to be honest, my father was kind of pathetic after she died. The only thing I could do was humour him. I've never volunteered, and the number of other Career tributes has meant it wasn't that difficult to just let someone else do it.

But that kid _died_. I can't even remember his name.

There's an awkward pause. It's like that a lot of the time. We sort of drifted apart without mother gluing the family together. It's just us now, in a house that feels emptier and greyer by the day. Some days it's like the only colour is the red of her hair in the photographs, and even that's fading. She's just fading out of our lives, leaving us alone, and we're just living out our days, being good little cogs.

I have to try not to cry when I think about it.

I bend down to tie my shoes, getting ready to leave. The house suddenly feels wrong, and I need to go meet Lisbea anyway.

I wander along our street, sharing the occasional glance with a neighbour sitting on their porch or someone walking in the street. On any normal day, the streets would be busy already with people going to work, a few kids going over to the gym for training before school. Not today. Today everyone has the day off work, off school. Today we send two kids off to the Capitol to fight for their lives.

And my father wants me to _volunteer?_

I wander for a bit, heading vaguely toward Lis' place, but not really aiming to get there any time soon. The whole place is sort of dusty, like it all needs to be cleaned off. Maybe then it'd shine, but the way it is, the district is just a grimy conglomeration of houses and buildings, little clumps in the mountains, surrounding an equally grimy town. I live in tiny outlying section - past my house there's only a few more streets before the houses become shacks and cottages, the bits of the district where the truly destitute live, hidden in the hills.

Living on the edge of the district, you see a fair bit of awful stuff, and, growing up, it made me pretty grateful.

I decide to head into town.

I wander down the street, past a house with boarded-up windows; a girl walks past, winking at me suggestively. I've seen her before – standing on corners at night, smiling and winking at strangers, hoping for business. It's strange, really, because she's at least a year younger than me, and I can only remember her as Odessa, who wore her brown hair in a long braid when I was a kid.

I keep walking, and she pouts. She's going home, I realise – her mother and sister live in this little wreck of a house further out, and I remember how hungry she looked sometimes, at school. She used to smile all the time, and I wonder how much of it was fake.

I wonder how many times her name's entered today. Tesserae for her, her mother, and her sister, Hanna, and she's what, sixteen? She has way more chance of being chosen than me, but then again there could be a girl willing to take her place. Even though volunteers have dried up a little over the last few years, there are still a few each year. Enough that choosing is still an important part of a reaping.

I catch the train, which rumbles along into town the way it does every day. I wonder, for a second, if the driver is the only person who works on reaping day. Or perhaps it's automated. I can't believe I've never thought about it before.

The further you get into town, the less grimy the buildings get, but they're grey concrete here. I disembark at the square, where a few technicians are still frantically working on the huge screens that have been put up to show the action as it happens - they like to space the reapings out during the day so they can feasibly show them live, and being District Two, we're early in the program. At the moment, there's something going wrong and the test pattern they're showing is distorted and flickering to black every few seconds, with snatches of some other program occasionally appearing.

I keep going, checking my watch. 6:24. I agreed to meet Lis at her place around 6:30, and she won't mind if I'm early – I mean, knowing her, she woke up at 2 in the morning to look through a telescope at some star. That's Lis for you – she got a telescope when she was thirteen, most expensive thing she owns, and she treasures it more than anything else. I sometimes feel like the telescope and I are competing for her affections.

I wander down her street, and realise that this place must be busy at any time other than the early morning. There are already people walking down the street, working in gardens, chatting. On a work day there'd be a crowd.

Even though the houses in her street are all identical, you can spot where Lis lives a mile off – her sister Karina is a gardener, and their whole front yard is a sea of colour. There are flowers all year, every year. The place is a little bubble of colour in the dust.

I push open the gate at the same time that Lis opens the front door. She grins when she sees me, and for a second I realise that she really is maddeningly pretty. I kind of forget, sometimes, in amidst the confusion of the whole thing. I mean, I think the reason I ever actually went out with her was because my father banned girlfriends, all in the name of preparation for the games. I mean, if I'm going to have a girlfriend, it may as well be a pretty blonde one.

And then she's kissing me and her lips are so damn soft nothing else matters.

I blink a few times, surprised, and then she's looking up at me, frowning. "You okay?"

It's a couple of seconds before I react. "Uh, yeah?"

She bites her lip. She's got her hands on my collar, like she's scared to let go, like I'll run off. "You're going to volunteer today, aren't you?"

Damn.

Damn, damn damn.

"I have to, don't I?"

She stares up at me, her eyes the brownest brown imaginable, and she looks like she's been physically hurt. "No. No, you don't have to. You never have to. Just let it _go, _Conor."

I turn to go, and she grabs my arm, her fingernails catching the fabric of my shirt. "Conor, you don't have to. You never had to. Just don't. For me. Please."

I'm walking now, and I get the feeling she is, too. She follows me the whole way back to the square. It's busy there now. The screens are functioning, and kids are being sectioned off into ages. Peacekeepers taking names, people standing around in their nice clothes. I take a glance around, wondering which of them will go to the Capitol today. Today we choose our tributes. Today we honour those that died, and we celebrate those who won. Today we make that sacrifice all over again.

And I can't help but think of us all as little cogs working together as a machine pushing children to their deaths in the Capitol.

"Conor, are you even listening to me?"

I turn around, and Lis is still there. She's doesn't so much look angry as concerned. I hate it when she does that – it makes me feel like a total jerk. "Conor, you don't have to volunteer."

"You don't get it," I mutter. "My dad, he…"

"I don't give a fuck about your dad. You don't have to do what he says all the time. This is _serious_, Conor. This is about your _life_."

"Lis, I – "

"_No_. Cut the excuses. Why do you want to volunteer?"

I respond almost automatically, good little cog that I am. "To make him proud of me."

She shakes her head. "You don't need to put your hand up for some bloody deathtrap to make him proud of you. You don't have to do this to – to make people like you."

I frown. "What exactly are you saying?"

She takes a deep breath. "I don't want you to die, okay?"

"What?"

She rolls her eyes. "I love you, idiot."

The second kiss is even better than the first.

"_CONOR!_"

The voice startles me – it feels like waking up from a dream. My father is storming towards me, his shirt untucked, still unshaven.

"What the hell do you think you're doing? I _told _you, no girlfriends!"

I'm too startled to speak for a few seconds. "Dad, I –"

"Oh, I get it. You don't think the rules apply to you. You think you're _better_ than us."

"No, I –"

He shakes his head, turning away. I feel like someone's punched me in the stomach. I just stand there for a minute, shocked.

Lis' hand finds mine, but I shake her off. "I need to go line up before it gets too packed."

She nods silently and we go our separate ways. It's like I'm walking through syrup – everything is blurry, and I can't seem to move properly, my feet sticking to the ground.

I watch as Lis disappears into a group of girls, and then I catch a glimpse of Odessa holding her sister's hand, a girl who can't be more than twelve, a kid who is pretty much exactly what I remember Odessa looking like when we were that age. Both of them look, bizarrely, happy. They're dressed in similar worn-out dresses, hair tied identically with ribbons. It seems impossible that she of all people should be wearing that smile, laughing and joking to her little sister. I shake my head, and in that instant, Odessa and her sister vanish into the crowd.

The majority of the reaping goes the way it usually does; I'm not really paying any kind of attention. It's only as Jet Ellis, the escort with his lime green sideburns, ridiculous in his Capitol way, steps toward the glass ball that contains the names of the girls. I glace over, trying to find Lis, but she's nowhere to be seen.

Jet skips back to the microphone, flattening out the strip of paper between pointed fingernails. "Hanna Quill!"

_Quill. Odessa Quill…_Hanna _Quill._

Odessa's sister.

I watch as the girl in the pink dress climbs the stairs on legs like toothpicks.

Jet grins. "Well, hey there. You'd be Hanna?"

Hanna nods almost imperceptibly.

"Well, Hanna, should I call for volunteers?"

Again, the tiny nod of the head.

"Well, okay then. Are there any volunteers?"

This is normally where a load of girls converge on the stage, eager for a chance to represent the district. But the last few years have been hard on Career tributes, and so there are only three of them – normally they let the first three onto the stage, and this year it'll be all of them.

"Okay, okay, come on up," Jet says, giggling with excitement. "What have we got here?"

He passes the microphone to the first girl, who's maybe sixteen, tall but not particularly muscular, with black hair and almond-shaped eyes. "What's your name?"

She takes it, sullen but determined. "Katarina. Katarina Lo."

"Well, let's hear it for Katarina, then!" There's applause.

Katarina passes the microphone to the next girl, a muscular, stocky one with close-cropped hair. "I'm Isabella Marius."

"Isabella, everybody!" Again, applause.

The third girl is the most striking by a long shot. She's slender but looks like she packs a bit of muscle. On top of that, she's drop-dead gorgeous. Every eye is on her. "Hi, I'm Elise. Elise Castor." Everyone in the audience is under her spell.

"Well, hello, Elise. Now, we're going to run through that again, and I want you all to make some _noise!_ I could barely hear you the first time!"

This is the part everyone loves.

"Let's hear it for Katarina Lo, people!"

There's some cheering, but nothing spectacular.

"Alrighty, what about…Isabelle Marius?"

Louder this time. She's a tough-looking girl, and I remember her swinging double axes in training. She's a strong as anything.

"And, finally…Elise Castor!"

The applause is deafening.

"Well, I think that's fairly clear. Let's hear it for Elise Castor, our female tribute!"

There's cheering and whoops, and Elise makes a little bow, and, given the cut of her dress, I'm fairly sure it was planned.

"Now for our gentlemen…" Jet says, striding over to the other ball as the other three girls leave the stage.

He digs about a bit before deciding on a slip from the very bottom. One of the Capitol techs gives him a signal from the camera station, and she hurries up a little. He's unfolding it as he walks back to the microphone. "Okay…have we got a Bremer Antonio?"

The boy extracts himself, a couple of his friends laughing as he makes his way to the stage, but Bremer himself doesn't seem amused, no doubt concerned about the turnout from the girls.

"Well, hello, there, Bremer. I wonder if you'd like me to call for volunteers?"

Bremer nods quickly.

Time slows down. This is the bit where I decide.

I glance over to where I know my father is standing, the place where he always is, and he's frowning.

It hits me then, what I have to do. What I have to do to make up for this.

When Jet calls for volunteers, I find myself pushing through the crowd to the stage.

There are just two of us, me and some kid I don't even recognise. He's about my age, maybe older, but I've never seen him in training.

"Well, hello, you two."

Jet shakes both of our hands, then asks our names. He passes the mic to me first. "I'm Conor Lupis." There's some applause. I'm just trying to work out how much, exactly, when Jet gestures to me to hand it over.

I pass it to the other guy. "I'm Daniel Marcus." Again, some applause, though I couldn't tell you whether it was more or less.

"Excellent, excellent. Now," he says, turning to the crowd. "I want to hear you this time."

I swallow. This is it. I've got this far, done this much to make my father proud, but will I fail at the final hurdle?

"Give it up for Conor Lupis, everybody!"

Cheers, applause. I'm a little stunned, actually. I'm not that impressive, just a tallish kid with red hair that's _way_ too curly.

"And Daniel Marcus!"

Again, applause. Was that more? I can't tell.

"Ooh, tough…" Jet murmurs. "But I have to say, I think the honour will go to Conor this time around!"

"Damn," Daniel mutters.

I just stand there for a second.

Me.

I'm going to the games.

Me.

* * *

><p>I never expected my father to visit me in the Justice Building, so I'm not surprised when my first visitor is not him but Lis. She hugs me silently, and I get the impression that's she's hurt by what happened before the reaping.<p>

I stroke her hair, and it's soft and silky, the curls falling to just below her shoulders. I'm noticing things I've never really noticed before – the way her nose turns up just at the end, the tiny freckles on her face. I trace her jawline like a blind man trying to imagine a face, trying to memorise her. A surge of panic rises as I realise I might never see her again.

She's still looking up at me, brown eyes red with crying. Suddenly I feel like a total arse.

"Lis, I –"

She puts a single finger to my lips, shutting me up. "Will you wear this? Please?"

She's holding up a bracelet, a single cream-coloured string with a silver charm shaped like the sun. It's a simple little thing, but I'm allowed a token from my district in the arena, and if it's going to be my only connection to home, I'd want it to be this. I take it, adjust it a little – her wrists are much slimmer than mine – and I put it on.

"Sure, I'll wear it. Thank you."

She smiles sadly. "Don't forget about me. Don't forget –"

The door is opened and the Peacekeepers enter. "Your time's up, miss."

They take her to the door, and she turns back to me, panicked. "Don't let them destroy you!"

The door slams shut behind her, and I frown. Not "Don't die", that was something else.

The Games change everybody, but if there's anything she wants less than for me to be killed, it'd be for me to come back a monster.

I shudder to think.

The door burst open, and, somewhat unexpectedly, it's my father. "Conor," he says brusquely.

"Dad."

He pulls something out of his pocket. "Here. I got you a token."

It's a silver locket. I take it from him, but when I open my mouth to speak he silences me. "No buts."

"I already have a token, Dad. Lis gave me –"

"That _girl_? No. Give it here."

I put my hand over my wrist protectively.

"Give it to me."

"No!"

"Conor, you're being a child. Give me the stupid bracelet." The threat in his voice is unmistakeable.

Slowly, reluctantly, I slip the bracelet off and hand it over. He takes it, then throws it away, over his shoulder somewhere. I try desperately to look where it landed, but in the thick carpet it could be anywhere. "What the hell was that for?"

He's already gone.

I sit down on the couch, disheartened. I open the locket with my thumbnail, and, as expected, inside I find a picture of my mother. I'm so engrossed in it that I don't even hear the door open, and I only look up when someone speaks. "Is this yours?"

It's the little girl, Hanna, in a half crouch, something in her hand. Her sister is just behind her.

I start, surprised to have another visitor, especially these girls.

And then I see what Hanna is holding.

I stride over, and Hanna stands up, the bracelet in her hand. "Actually, it belongs to Lis."

Odessa smiles wryly. "Your girlfriend?"

"Yeah." I turn to Hanna. "Hey, can I ask you a favour?"

The kid looks uncertain, but nods.

"Can you give that back to her?"

Hanna ponders this for a second, then nods agreement.

"Great. No offence, Odessa, but she'd probably take it badly coming from you."

She laughs, then, a genuine laugh, and I'm flabbergasted. Then she kisses me on the cheek and I'm pretty much standing there stunned until they leave.

The journey to the station is uneventful, but as I watch the cameras all around, as Elise smiles and waves and blows kisses, I wonder what they really think of us. We are only entertainment, after all. Probably there are people betting on us already. I mean, damn, I'd put any money on Elise to win the whole thing.

But what are my odds?


	5. District Three: Disorientation

**A note from your author**

And we take a break from Career districts for a moment and arrive in District 3. Please keep your hands and feet inside the train until we have come to a complete halt.

Many thanks to Purple Embers for giving me this lovely tribute - I really enjoyed writing this chapter, she's so great and has loads of backstory.

Anyway, on with the show.

**~ Madeleine**

* * *

><p><em>Lerna Tren, Age Thirteen, District Three<em>

The morning of the reaping arrives like any other morning, and yet there's a tension in the atmosphere of the district. The streets outside the window seem darker without the people coming home from the early shift, or the people going off to the day shift.

Nobody works on the day of the reaping, and they never make you come in on the night before either, mostly because the reaping's at 9:30 and they don't want anyone slacking off to sleep. So I didn't have to go in yesterday afternoon either, even though I only have a half shift because I'm under fourteen. My mother, however, works the day shift and had to go in yesterday anyway.

It kind of pisses me off that she has to work all day, because I never really see her – I finish school and go off to the factory about the same time as she finishes her shift, and when I get home it's almost 9pm, and she's almost always in bed.

That's the way it is for most people, really. You work and you scrape by and you make do. Then you die. It's that simple, really – people die. You just have to hope that it's not you.

The light streaming in through the kitchen windows is harsh and I have to shield my eyes as I get a glass of water. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Framed in the harsh light, I look skinny and pale, bags under my eyes, t-shirt slipping off a bony shoulder. With my hair hanging around my face, I look like a spectre.

I sip the water, but my throat is dry. I'm not sure whether or not it's just nerves. I'm starting to feel genuinely terrified now, but it's not nearly as bad as last year. I remember not even wanting to get out of bed, and then worrying so much I almost made myself sick.

Actually, it's probably worse this year. I was only entered three times then, but now there are six slips with my name on them. I'm twice as likely to have my name drawn out this year as I was last time.

I push the thought from my mind. There are girls older than me whose names are in there more times. Girls who take tesserae for families of seven or eight, families packed like sardines in a can into the standardised housing we all live in. I imagine having five siblings, little tiny people to feed. We barely get by with both my mother and I working, let alone feeding kids. It breaks her heart when I have to miss a meal. Imagining that times five is impossible.

I don't have time to heat water for a bath, so I wash my face and comb my hair before getting into the clothes I set out last night – a cream-coloured dress my mother lent me just for the occasion. We're practically the same height now, and, although I really don't have any nice clothes, my father used to buy her lovely things whenever he got his Development paycheck.

I can't remember it that well - and I'm sort of glad I don't. I'd just miss him more than I already do, him and the life we had. With his job in Tech Development and her working in a factory, we had enough money to make our concrete box more like a home.

I wander over to the cupboard to find my shoes, but instead I pull out a box from the corner. Inside are a few dresses and toys from when I was little, the ones we didn't have to sell. They've become my memories, really – I was only five when he died, and I can't remember anything properly.

I run a hand over the soft fabric of one of the dresses and try and imagine myself wearing the tiny frilly thing, playing with the doll, but it all seems like somebody else's life. There's a photo of the three of us, though, that's hung up in the hallway, and I'm wearing one of the two dresses mum kept – pale blue with an embroidered flower. Looking at them, you can tell what features I get from each of them – the dark hair, the shape of the face, the skin tone and the thin lips from my father, and the green eyes, the build and turned-up nose from my mother. I'm about four in the photo, and my parents are beaming. My mother always says that I was the best thing in her world, and in that photo, I almost believe it.

Looking at it hurts, though, because eventually you have to tear your eyes away and face reality. After my father died, his parents were unhelpful – they'd recommended he marry someone with at least _some_ money, and my mother was poor as dirt. They refused to help us.

My maternal grandmother was our guardian angel – she brought hot food when our stomachs were empty, sewed clothes for me, helping in any way she could. She was poor herself, but she wouldn't abandon her daughter and granddaughter. I owe her everything, but I never told her – she died when I was nine.

By then, my mother was working her factory shift and washing clothes for extra money, and we got by after that. Every now and then it got desperate - there would be days when there just wasn't any food, when we had to try and sell our few possessions in the market to get by. Those days are rarer now, with my job and my tesserae.

But the reaping still terrifies me. It's the one thing I'm powerless against. I work in order to be able to eat. I behave in order to stay out of trouble. But I can't stop the reaping. I shudder.

I hear my mother's bed creaking, and I wander back into the kitchen.

* * *

><p>Breakfast is a special treat – fried eggs. My mother and I both stand at the hotplate, poised with spatulas.<p>

"Careful," she says. "Careful! You'll overdo it."

She like her eggs runny, something I find a little gross.

"Just because some of us don't like snotty eggs," I say as I flip her eggs onto a plate, and suddenly we're both laughing. She pokes me, and I giggle.

I don't think I've giggled for about a month.

"You look wonderful," she says.

I shrug, swallowing a mouthful of egg. "Thanks."

"Really," she says. "You look…grown up."

It's intended as a compliment, but it feels sort of like an insult. Honestly, I've been a grownup for a long time. It happened quickly – in our situation, it has to.

* * *

><p>We make it to the square with plenty of time to go – the reaping's not till 9:30, but it's always good to be early.<p>

I stand in line at the census tables for a few minutes – the square is already filling up. I glance around myself, taking in the hive of activity, the smells of sweat and soap, the chatter, coughing and occasional nervous laugh. I glance at the Capitol techs assembling the microphones and the camera rigs.

All the equipment is brand new, state of the art, which is mildly amusing I assemble cameras for a living.

The tech assembling the camera rig is blatantly incompetent, and when he looks to one of the others for help, I catch a glimpse of his face – he can't be more than sixteen. He's a bit young to be assigned to a job like that, especially in the districts.

He catches my eye, and there's something in the gaze that makes me uncomfortable. Why he just doesn't just ask for help I don't know.

Then it hits me. He _can't_.

It all starts to make sense. The menial job, the inability to ask for assistance, the intensity of his stare. He's an Avox.

I wonder what crime he committed. What horrible thing could he have done to deserve that fate – a life of forced silence and servitude? Could he have killed somebody? No, he wouldn't be allowed to be out in the open like that if he had. He'd be locked up.

He's still staring, and it's slightly disturbing. His glare seems to be accusing me. _I didn't do anything, _I think. _I'm not the one who…who cut your tongue out. Stop glaring at me!_

Eventually I avert my gaze, trying to think of anything but what they've done to his tongue.

"Name, age, sex?"

I shake myself. The Peacekeeper looks up expectantly, as if she's chastising me for being inattentive.

"Lerna Tren, thirteen, female." It's funny how you learn the routine. It's only my second reaping and I'm already used to how we get shunted around and led into pens like cattle – and that's what they are, really, holding pens. I get squished in between two other thirteen-year-old girls, one about my height with caramel-brown skin, her dark hair held in place by a long hairpin, and one a full head taller, with two ash-blonde plaits, like a little girl. I glance around me, knowing that today, none of these people are safe.

My mind wanders and I glance into the crowd, avoiding the tech now rolling out a cable.

Suddenly, I see a familiar face.

But that's not possible.

It isn't.

I mentally slap myself. Brayna died two years ago. And that boy didn't really bear any more than a passing resemblance to him.

But the sight of him cut me like a knife. All of the things I felt after he died had started to escape from the locked doors I stuffed them behind.

I try to push the thoughts away; they won't help me get through today. But I can't stop thinking about him. He was probably the only person I have ever called a friend.

Everything we had was the opposite of what life is normally like for two kids from our district. We were…secure, in a way that I've never felt before or since. We were inseparable. We'd walk to school together – and, truth be told, that was a relief for my mother, because she wasn't able to take me, and it's not exactly safe, a little girl walking alone.

We also spent most afternoons together, taking a path from school that lead us to the outskirts of the district, where the people who couldn't be squeezed into concrete tenements lived in shacks that seemed a second from collapse. We'd climb the hill there, the furthest point from both my house and the centre of town before you reached the electric fence. In some parts of the district, houses back right onto it, but out there, there was nobody. We'd sit on the grass, the only bit of green I ever knew, and we'd talk for hours. It seems silly now, but when I was little, we'd make up stories where we could transform into birds and fly over the fence.

"If you were a bird, you'd be a little one, like a sparrow," he'd tease.

I'd poke him. "No, silly, I'd be a pretty one, a songbird. And you'd be a dumb pigeon. Or a duck." I'd made stupid quacking noises, too. It's sort of embarrassing, but there's nobody else to remember anymore.

"No, I know," he'd say. "You're a jabberjay, 'coz you talk so much."

We'd be in fits of giggles for a few minutes, then I'd tell him he was a silly turkey and he'd tell me I was a little chickadee and then we'd decide he was an owl because he was smart.

Then we'd tell stories where we'd fly away and have adventures, visiting the other districts we only knew as pictures in schoolbooks and on television and the Capitol that, to my eight-year-old eyes, seemed like a magical place, with its bright colours and the glamour, in its bizarreness and its beauty, it that existed only on television.

After he was reaped, when I was eleven, I was horrified. Suddenly everything I thought about the Capitol, about the glamour and the colours and the pretty clothes, seemed to be just glazing over the truth – that they took kids off and killed them for _entertainment_. I was eleven, and I'm still ashamed it never hit me before that.

When they took him away on that sweltering summer afternoon, I lost the plot. I wept for several hours, then, when the tears ran out, I hid myself away in my room under the covers, wishing I could just curl up and die.

My mother broke the rules for me that year. Everyone's told you have to make sure your children watch the Games, but my mother didn't. She let me run out of the room when Brayna was cornered by the Careers, and, although she couldn't switch it off without alerting someone we weren't watching, she muted the volume as they broke his head open.

I had to face the recaps the next day at school, though, and I practically broke down in the cafeteria. People didn't really help me, although I knew they were feeling much the same – many of them knew him too. I just sat there, trying not to watch but unable to take my eyes away – the Careers laughed as the boy from district 4 smashed the club down over and over again long after the cannon had fired, long after there was nothing left but pulp. They _laughed_.

I came to hate the Capitol after those Games. For a long time I would rage about how unfair everything was, about the Capitol and what they did to us, and my mother would be terrified, but eventually I just learned to shut my face at home and at school, to just be good and obedient and never to make much noise.

I never really got over his death, and at the reaping the year after, my first, I was terrified out of my mind that my name would be called. It's common for twelve-year-olds to be nervous enough to throw up before their first reaping, but this was something else. I shook like a leaf the whole time, and I nearly fainted in the moments before the name of our girl tribute was drawn.

When I realised it wasn't me my relief did little to relieve my anxiety. As Elinor Rossetti climbed the stairs to the stage, all I could think of was her in his place, blood and brains being ground into the dirt by a vicious Career tribute.

I feel sick even thinking about it.

I glance up at the stage, at the victors assembled there, ranging from an old man who needs assistance to get into his char to a disoriented woman with greying hair. They're a pathetic bunch, really, the five who survived the Games. They're supposed to be the strongest, but really they're just as worn down as the rest of us, broken.

Then the escort, Luciane, a beautiful, dark-skinned woman with swirling tattoos, steps forward, and the crowd is silenced. She's wearing a long, dark red dress, tied with a sash, and I can't help notice how elegant she looks. That's the only thing I still like about the Capitol – they have some great clothes. The hideous modifications, tattoos and dyed hair I could live without, but the clothes! An entire rainbow of hues, slinky fabrics and fluffy ones, everything from the elegant to the downright bizarre. I reach into my pocket; run my fingers over the strip of satin I keep as a lucky charm. Brayna found it by the side of the road, and gave it to me, knowing how I loved beautiful things. It's silvery, a peculiar shape, just an offcut, but I treasured it. I sewed the edges so it didn't fray, neat little black stitches all around. Just the feel of it reassures me.

I relax, knowing that any number of these girls have their names on more slips than I do. After this, we can go home and eat the stew my mother put on the stove before we left. The thought of it makes my mouth water – the vegetables she bought fresh yesterday, the beef that's such a rarity here, all bought specially for the occasion. My mother pretends it doesn't bother her, but they were expensive, even though we bought them from Maryam, and they're almost certainly illegal, particularly the meat. It's possible she grew the vegetables in her own garden, which is fine, but selling them isn't looked on kindly by Peacekeepers. As for the beef…it's best not to think about it. Likely it came in with a shipment of mechanical parts from district 6. The black market is a thriving second industry there, and while there are buyers, they'll continue to find ways of hiding the goods from the Peacekeepers.

Luciane is just finishing her spiel about how the Games are a time for both repentance and appreciation of the Capitol's forgiveness, and the techs have finally gotten the systems working properly.

"Well then," she says, in a high voice that seems to cut straight through you, "let's start with our ladies…"

She steps up to the glass ball containing the names of the girls, and the District holds its collective breath. She picks about a bit, digging around and getting right to the bottom, before drawing out a slip of paper, folded, pristine and white.

Luciane holds it up to the cameras, no doubt under instructions to be dramatic, and she's solemn as she unfolds it.

She clears her throat once, and then says, clearly and slowly, "Lerna Tren."

The girl next to me, the one with the hairpin, stares, and a couple of others start to turn and glance in my direction. Suddenly it seems like the entire world is staring at me, which, of course, is nearly true.

I can't stand straight – I feel strangely dizzy, and suddenly the world is tilting and then there are arms around me – the blond girl. I must have fallen.

I walk toward the stage, trying not to sway too much. The crowd parts for me, and I climb the stairs.

Luciane smiles at me. "Well, Lerna, nice to see you."

I nod vaguely.

"Do we have any volunteers?"

The square rings with silence, everyone by themselves pitying and silently thanking whatever deity they still cling to that it wasn't them, it wasn't them, they're safe, it wasn't them.

"Well, I believe a round of applause is in order for our courageous female tribute!"

As expected, none comes. The silence is loaded – nobody claps because I am their sister, their neighbour, their daughter. They refuse to applaud every single year. The will not glamorise this by applauding it.

Luciane is unfazed, and she trots over to the other glass ball. I notice her red shoes have heels that are at least five inches high, maybe more. I have no idea how she can walk in them.

She swirls around in the glass ball just like she did before drawing out my name. I glance into the crowd – one of these boys will be my enemy in a fight to the death. I just hope it's nobody particularly brawny – then again, around here, who is?

Having decided on a slip, Luciane draws it out, again pausing for dramatic effect, before reading in that same clear voice: "Adrian Rosales!"

The boy is revealed by the parting crowd. He's maybe fourteen, small and scrawny, his black hair flopping into his face. He makes his way to the stage, an expression of shock on his face. He walks blindly to the stairs, and almost trips coming up to the stage.

"Well, hello, Adrian," Luciane smiles.

Adrian mumbles a reply.

Luciane turns back to the crowd. "Any volunteers?"

Suddenly, there's movement. The crowd murmurs. Volunteers are a rarity.

A boy pushes his way out of the crowd. He's maybe sixteen, tall and dark-haired, almost handsome.

"I'll do it," the boy says. "I volunteer."

The murmuring increases, but Luciane cuts it off. "Well, come on up, then."

The new boy climbs the stairs.

"Well, hello. Who would you be?"

"I'm Corvus," he says, a little out of breath. "Corvus Arietis."

"Well, let's hear it for Corvus, then!"

This time, there are smatterings of applause. This isn't for the Capitol, I can tell. This is for him.

I wonder whether he's brave or just stupid.

* * *

><p>I'm alone in the sitting room of the Justice building for quite a while. The couch is plush, but the carpet's softer, and for a few minutes I sit on the floor. I resist the urge to bury my face in it.<p>

I glance around myself. There's nobody to see, of course.

Lying face down in the carpet, swirling my fingers through it, I try to get my thoughts in order. What'll I do in the Games? I'm probably going to be smaller than any of the others, especially the Careers. If one of them gets me, I'm screwed. I have no particular talents, no skills with weapons. I'll have to learn to use one, I suppose. I could handle a knife, almost certainly.

But could I kill somebody? The answer, I decide, is a resounding yes. If it mean coming home, yes.

The door opens and I scramble up. My mother, of course. Her eyes are red, but she's holding herself together, probably for my sake.

She embraces me wordlessly.

I stroke her hair – bizarrely, I feel like I'm the one doing the comforting, rather than the other way around.

Which, in a way, makes sense. She's the one who's almost certainly about to lose her only daughter.

"Just…be tough," she says lamely. "Hell, Lerna, there is nobody tougher than you. Just remember me, okay? Just…oh God…"

"It'll be okay," I say, arms still around her. "It'll be okay. Just stay strong, okay? No matter what happens, you're going to see it on screen, and just…be ready for that, okay?" If there's anything worse than thinking about the likelihood of my death, it's thinking about what it would do to my mother.

She pulls back, hands on my shoulders. "God, you were getting so big, Lern…"

I duck my head, trying to look away as the tears start. I don't want to see her crying, and I don't want her to see me. Truth is, it hurts. She knows I'll die just as well as I do, but hearing it from her is worse.

The Peacekeepers come to take her away eventually, and I have no other visitors. After a while, come back to escort me and Corvus Whatsisname to the station.

He seems to be holding up surprisingly well; perhaps he has actually planned this, maybe the volunteering wasn't just a spur of the moment thing.

As we board the train, Luciane leads us to our quarters for the next day or so, and my stomach grumbles. Inexplicably, the only thing I can think of is the stew my mother was preparing – more than enough for the two of us.

And definitely too much for one.


	6. District Three: Impulse

**A note from your author**

We return to the lovely District Three to give you this wonderful tribute, who came to me via the lovely Evan (Toxophilite). He was a bitch to write, but I loved him.

But enough of that, on with the show.

**~Madeleine**

* * *

><p><em>Corvus Arietis, Seventeen Years, District Three<em>

Sunrise comes early in summer, bright and quickly. It's almost beautiful, watching the sunlight coat the buildings gold, and you can forget that they're just concrete boxes. And in those concrete boxes are dozens of people doing just what you're doing, forgetting for just a minute where they are, in the early morning.

Those few minutes between sleeping and waking, while the sun rises and everything is gold, can't last long enough. Before long, the light is harsh and angling through the windows, and people are stirring, and everything's back to grey.

On reaping day, everyone's a little less busy, and you're getting into nice clothes rather than factory uniforms. It makes a nice change, actually, everyone clean and fresh, because you don't see that often. I'm not opposed to standing around in a button-up shirt for a few hours. Some people (not mentioning the name Pictor, no sir) don't like it, and complain at every opportunity. I think it's kind of nice, everyone being dressed up, even if it's only in case we get sent to the Capitol to be killed. Pictor, on the other hand, complains wildly about being forced to wear a shirt that has long sleeves – in fact, he complains about just about everything about the reaping. He does, however, like to use them as a chance to get a good look at the girls we don't really see at school. He's always trying to set me up – in fact, he's always trying to set _everyone _up. He's like, super-wingman. He's got plans for just about everybody. Right now, he's trying to steer me towards Amelia Lu, and I think I've heard him tell me she's got a cute nose about a hundred times. She _is_ pretty cute, but I honestly don't see the point of the exercise – we've never really talked, don't have any classes together; don't tread in the same social circles. Pictor's conversations with me usually end up me saying I don't want to ask out somebody I don't really know, and him going "well, why don't you get to know her first, then _get to know her_," nudge nudge wink wink.

I'm just not that interested in Amelia Lu, okay?

To be honest, the only girl I ever actually get within a ten-metre radius of, except maybe in hallways, is the girl I sit next to in History lectures, Cara. The lectures themselves are boring as hell, a load of crap about how we owe everything to the Capitol (including, apparently, the two-hour snorefest lecture on Fridays), but she's okay. Shorter than me by a long shot, stocky and tough-looking, sullenly disrespectful of pretty much everything to do with the Capitol…she's not exactly the sort of person Pictor would try and set me up with. But we have a secret language of eye-rolls and raised eyebrows, and I even look forward to Friday morning lectures sometimes. Anyway, we manage to make eachother's days slightly less boring.

I consider, for a second, whether we should have made plans to meet up this morning, before the reaping at 9:30. We could talk, hang out in the backstreet where the people we hang out with seem to gravitate to whenever we have free time (which, taking into account school, factory shifts, compulsory television viewing, and all the other crap that seems to take up time, is less and less). Aside from the occasional influx of teenagers, the street is mostly unused – it's the back of the shoeshop and a couple of townhouses – and there are crates scattered around that function fairly shoddily as chairs and tables. It's never planned; you just hear at school that everyone's going to "the street", and the next thing you know it's the place to be and who the hell cares that there's a History lecture first thing tomorrow, everyone's going and then, surprise surprise, here's some booze that fell off the back of a truck and people decide it's a great idea to piss on the electric fence, and then the gang boys show up and everyone's torn between thinking it's the best thing that's happened all year and being terrified, and then the owner of one of the houses is calling the Peacekeepers and it turns into "last one left explains to the cops".

Cara rarely turns up to those – she's got more sense than most of us. Anyway, we can talk after the reaping.

I take a brief shower and almost trip over myself getting out. I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror – my hair's flat to my forehead, and it's getting long, so I look pretty stupid. It'll dry quickly, though. I struggle into the only pair of nice trousers I own, only to discover that, since last year's reaping, I've grown too tall for them. It's to be expected, really – I grow at an almost ridiculous rate, and I'm definitely not done yet. The cuffs sit at an awkward height above my ankles – I should have known better, really, but the truth is that paying for new pants are something we could do without. Even with my job and tesserae and my parents both working, we're dirt poor. It doesn't seem fair, that a family where every member works should still be struggling, but factory jobs don't pay that well.

That's why I'm determined to get accepted into Tech Development, which pays way better and, besides, actually _making _things sure beats standing on a production line for hours on end. I've always been good at it, too, so it won't be hard to get in. I'd be rubbish at systems, so actual hardware would be where I'd end up. Computers are boring, but the lure of inventing is enough for me. Creating electronic gadgets that serve no purpose except to amuse Capitolites shouldn't be hard. I'd be happy just being let loose on proper tools and materials – as it is, I built my alarm clock out of what I could find lying around, and the antenna I engineering to try and get reception for the Capitol TV channels only lasted a few days owing mainly to the fact that it consisted mostly of spare parts. It worked, though, and for a few days we got fuzzy fashion programs and a dumb romance-centric show as well as the standardised programming. My mother freaked out a little about that one, because it was so blatantly in defiance of the Capitol, but it broke before anyone came knocking about why there were wires running up to a pole on the roof of our building.

The other time my mother freaked out was when I was eight, and I worked out how to set off a load of battery-powered sparks, in the square in front of the Justice Building no less. I thought it was hilarious, but the Peacekeepers were less than impressed and dragged me home to explain to my parents that I was a delinquent and needed to be kept under better control. I got yelled at a fair bit afterwards, but the only thing I cared about was that they'd taken the device away. It was pretty cool, whirring and spinning and sending off tiny, fiery points of light. It was great, but I can't remember how I got it to work anymore.

Although working in Tech probably won't be as interesting as that, at least we'll be able to live, if not well, then at least comfortably.

In the end, I switch out the too-small trousers for a slightly more worn pair, and I select a nice shirt to go with it, but put on a t-shirt instead so I don't have to worry about making a mess with breakfast.

The breakfast is the usually mushy fare that you cook out of tessera grain, almost grey and just about as inedible as it looks, but there'll be bakery bread and soft cheese for lunch. It's a tradition, I guess to eat better on reaping day than you usually do. The whole thing is supposed to be a celebration, even if nobody really sees it as one. Some kids give eachother gifts on the morning of the reaping, but I have no siblings and no close friends. Besides, I'm not really a kid anymore. Next year will be my final reaping.

Over the bowl of tastelessness, I mentally count out how many times my name's in the reaping this year. It's just lucky we're a small family, because if I had siblings, that'd be more tesserae and the entries add up quickly over the years. Some part of my brain reminds me of a fact I never knew I'd absorbed; Cara has two younger siblings and one half-sibling, all under twelve. But she's not seventeen yet, and she won't have as many as she could. Does she take tesserae for her dad's wife? Is she allowed to do that? If she could, would she? I'd never thought to ask. What about the little one, Elsie, who's her half-sister?

My concern for her safety turns into irritation that I don't really know that much about Cara at all. Our discussions never extend past small talk.

No wonder Pictor is constantly trying to set me up. There's no way I'd be able to get a girl by myself.

I push the thought from my mind, eating the last of my breakfast and change into my button-up shirt. My hair's already dry, but it still looks weird. My hair is always messy, to be honest. It won't sit flat, full stop. I don't care, but my mother occasionally tries to attack me with a comb, to no avail. Today, it seems, is one of those days, though she has to stand on her tiptoes to even have a chance of reaching - I've been taller than her for years now. My dad's about my height, though.

My mother finishes her comb attack, to little avail, and then asks: "What happened to your other pants?"

"I grew out of them."

She shakes her head, exasperated. "I bought those pants less than a year ago."

I frown. "Uh, no, you bought them like a week before the reaping. More than a year ago. I've grown, okay?"

She rolls her eyes. "Is it that bad? Those ones look a little scruffy."

"Mum, they were too short. _I'll _buy a new pair of pants, okay? Don't worry about it."

She doesn't look too impressed, but lets it lie.

We leave the flat, dad making sure to lock the door properly. It's been screwing up lately, and the last thing we need is for some teenage hooligans to decide that the best way to celebrate not being reaped is to loot people's houses for what little valuables they contain.

There are a couple of other people in the grey concrete stairwell as we enter, all dressed up, all heading to the reaping. We pass the second floor, and the door opens, practically slamming me in the face.

"Sorry, bro."

Of course. He sure knows how to make an entrance.

"Hi, Pictor."

He looks fairly uncomfortable in a button-up shirt and nice pants, which, I note, are the same ones he wore last year. He hasn't grown.

He holds the door open for his sister, who's way taller than I remember. She's grown out of the frizzy red hair and skinny thirteen-year-old awkwardness. Well, the hair's still a little frizzy. And very red. But the point is, in my mind she's perpetually thirteen and here she is looking decidedly…not thirteen.

Pictor waves his hand in front of my face. "Um…dude? I'm over here."

I spin to face him and he leads us a little way ahead, out of earshot of my parents and his mother and sister. "So. Today you're going to have to be in a square with every other girl your age. Big day. Are you going to actually, you know, _talk to people_?"

I roll my eyes. "Maybe after I get over the crippling fear of being sent off to die."

He scowls. "Attitude like that isn't going to get you anywhere. Look, I suck at math, but the chance of either of us getting picked is like…one in a pretty damn huge number. Family of three, remember?"

We reach the bottom of the stairs and Pictor pushes the door open, harsh sunlight almost blinding us. We step outside, and it's already getting uncomfortably hot, never mind the stink of the factories. It'll be sweltering by the time the reaping is over. I'm just glad it's not at midday or we'd all go home burnt red, especially seeing as Pictor and Andie are both pale as anything. Pictor lucked out at avoiding the "awkward and ginger" genes, though. . He's got dark hair, but shares the same eyes his sister has: wide, hazel and innocent-looking. Their father's legacy. They're a massive contrast with the rest of Pictor, which is rude, slouchy and cynical.

He sticks his hands in his pockets as we walk, looking for a stone to kick along. The street is mostly empty – there's still some time to go before the reaping, and most people don't turn up until just before – why would you? It's a day off work; of course people are going to sleep in. Especially since working in the factories, despite being incredibly boring and monotonous, is probably the most tiring job imaginable.

Most people spend their lives in those factories. You just waste away, basically. You can see it in people's faces – their expressions are lifeless, eyes dull. The teenagers have a saying, "live before the rest of your life happens". Adulthood is going to suck, and you'll turn into one of _them_. May as well live your life now.

It's a little depressing, to be honest.

Pictor and I walk in almost complete silence. It's not like there's much to say. To be honest, Pictor is scared shitless of the reaping. Has been since we were twelve. Taking out tesserae for himself, his mother and his sister isn't like him, but he feels obliged – he's older than Andie, and to be honest he's super protective of her. I think she's the only person he honestly cares about.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't an only child.

As we walk toward the town square, the streets get busier. Our building is way outside what you'd call the "centre of town", which is mostly comprised of the townhouses where the slightly wealthier live, plus the Justice Building and the shops. On the other side of that, the district peters out into houses that by the look of them should be falling down. Past that there are only scraggly bushes, the only patch of green outside of pathetic vegetable gardens I've seen anywhere in the district.

Our house is on the other side of the town centre, only a few blocks from the factories. Outside, it smells bad the whole time, and when the wind's blowing the wrong way everything stinks.

A truck passes us by, rumbling along, a whole unit of Peacekeepers sitting in the back like sardines, twelve of them at the least.

The town square is packed by the time we arrive. We queue up, behind two identical boys who can't be more than twelve. One of them has his hair parted on the right, and one on the left.

The Peacekeeper at the desk is about forty, her greyish hair tied back austerely. Pictor steps up to the desk, and, as they do every year, the Peacekeeper asks in a monotone voice: "Name, age, sex?"

Pictor rolls his eyes. "Pictor Vela, seventeen, male."

The Peacekeeper checks her documents. "Okay, over there."

Pictor wanders over to the section pointed out to him, full of other seventeen-year-olds.

"Next!"

Andie walks up, her curly hair bouncing slightly as she does so.

"Name, age, sex?"

"Andie – Andromeda Vela, sixteen, female." I realise I haven't heard her say a single word in the last three years. Her voice, like just about everything about her, has changed. She used to be the most enthusiastic person I knew, talkative and cheerful all the time. Now she just seems tired. Like everybody else.

It's a crying shame.

I'm probably just as bad, though. We all get like that eventually. Tired and dulled down. We work every day just to feed ourselves, without a thought for anything more.

My thoughts are interrupted by the impatient Peacekeeper at the desk. "Are you listening, kid?"

"Yeah," I mumble. "Corvus Arietis, seventeen, male."

I get shunted over to a bunch of seventeen-year-olds, crammed in next to Pictor.

It occurs to me how easily the name drawn out could be mine. There's no sense to it, no fairness, just chance. There are 24 slips in there with Corvus Arietis on them. 24 in thousands, of course. But it's up to chance. It's totally random.

Maybe it'd be better that I got reaped than say, a twelve-year-old. I've got more of a chance than a kid that age. I'm not stupid or particularly malnourished, although I'd be puny compared to someone from a Career district. Smarts are a serious strategy, and lately, there have been less Career winners than my parents say is usual. It's all for the viewers, after all, and they love an unlikely winner. You can make lots of money on those.

If someone from our district wins, we get extra supplies – grain, oil, bread, luxuries like sweets, syrup, canned fruit. But nobody with a chance ever volunteers here, because you learn as soon as you're able to understand that it's best just to keep your head down. Which is true. But maybe someone should.

The Capitol announcer, Luciane Reynolds, a stylish woman in a red silk dress and a bizarre hat, steps up to the microphone. Capitol fashions get weirder year by year, I swear.

She has a high, clear voice. The sort you obey without a second thought. Authoritative.

"Well, then, let's start with our ladies."

There's a hush as the mundane little noises people usually make die off. The idle chatter, the shuffling of feet, the nervous little actions – they all stop. Terror reigns, now that the moment is imminent. The girls hold their breath, and in that second I'm gripped by second-hand terror for Andie, for Cara, for Amelie, who I barely know.

Luciane draws out a slip of paper and several people draw breath. She holds it up, building the tension, no doubt, for the Capitol audience. Who knows why. The names of the tributes are of no importance to them. In a few minutes, once the name is drawn, betting odds will be calculated based on age and as much about their health or state of starvation as can be drawn from a two-minute television appearance on a stage.

She unfolds it, smooths it out, clears her throat, and reads, in a sombre, clear voice, "Lerna Tren."

The crowd breathes again. It's not them, it's not them.

There's movement in the thirteens. A young girl, then. Statistically, that's less likely than an older one. But then again, do slips of paper care about statistics?

A small girl with choppy black hair walks unsteadily up the steps to the stage. She's skinny as hell in an old-fashioned cream dress. I can hear the crowd murmur. Sympathy, probably. She's dead, almost certainly. She'd starve too easily, and she's probably too weak to use a weapon. They've counted her out already.

It occurs to me that even _I _would have more chance than her. I'm not starving, I'm not tiny, and I'm not stupid, either. In fact, I have more of a chance than almost anyone here. There are a few guys who are better off, maybe better fed, some who are naturally big, but I'm smarter. Probably tougher, too, than anyone who has an advantage of health and size.

She's going to _die_. She's going to die, and so's some random boy. Some kid who doesn't know that his life is about to be torn apart.

The escort calls for applause, and nobody claps. Of course.

She walks over to the other glass ball, containing the names of the boys. One of them is going to die, one of them is going to die…

"Adrian Rosales!"

Adrian is some kid I remember getting beat up one time in the Street for generally being a cocky little shit. He's skinny, dark greasy hair hanging in his face. He walks to the stage, face blank. He's barely taller than Lerna, and just as skinny. He mounts the steps, and Luciane smiles as him.

"Well, hello, Adrian," she says.

He mumbles something. That's what got him in trouble, really. He'd say something stupid and then mumble something even worse under his breath. People disliked him fairly quickly.

Luciane turns to the crowd, the sash of her dress slightly loose. I can see her itching to pull it up, but this is live and she's on camera and she's trained to be a presence. Hiking up your clothes isn't very presentable.

"Any volunteers?"

And before my head has time to tell me it's a bad idea, I'm pushing through the crowd.

"I'll do it. I volunteer."

The crowd murmurs. Whether it's approval or not I don't know or particularly care.

Luciane silences it with her voice. "Well, come on up, then."

I walk towards the stage, and after about a second, the rest of my brain kicks in and immediately reminds me how stupid I am. I mean, I literally just volunteered to almost certainly die in order to prevent the death of an annoying fourteen-year-old.

Damn, I need to think more often.

I climb the stairs to the stage, and I feel every pair of eyes in the crowd on me. I've drawn their attention, all right. By being a total idiot.

"Well, hello. Who would you be?"

She smiles at me, her teeth improbably white.

"I'm Corvus," I say, trying not to betray the fact that I'm already regretting what I've done. "Corvus Arietis." Ah, the decisions I make on whims. They never end well.

* * *

><p>They let you have an hour in the Justice Building for your family or your friends to come and say goodbye. It's a nice room, with a plush velvet couch and matching plum-coloured armchair. I sit for a while, just staring at a clock on the wall. It's ticking obnoxiously loudly, as if to remind me how long I have left. 51 minutes and 20 seconds left here, and then a ride to the Capitol, then the stylists get hold of you. Then there are chariot rides that night, then three days of training and a private session. Then interviews, then it's into the arena. Less than a week.<p>

It starts to dawn on me exactly what I've done.

My first visitor is the one I was least expecting. Andie walks through the door by herself, without Pictor. She stands awkwardly for a minute, unable to really decide on something to say.

50 minutes.

"That was….that was quite something you did, Corvus," she decides on, eventually. "Brave. Stupid, of course," she laughs, "but brave."

She smiles a little. "Well, my friend Lee Minh is holding a party, just a regular sort of thing, a little one. You know. 'Thank goodness that's over' and all." She sighs, and smooths a flyaway back to her head. Awkward and ginger sort of suits her. "I was going to invite you, and everything. But, uh, good luck and all that stuff. Despite your little act, you're not exactly stupid, so…I dunno if telling you to try and come back is the sort of thing you say at these? Do people say that? I don't know. But, um, yeah. Please don't die."

"I'll try my hardest." I reply, somewhat lamely.

She smiles, a funny little sad half-smile. "Well, I'd best be going. Pictor is sort of waiting. He let me go first."

And with that, she's gone.

48 minutes.

Pictor pushes the door open, and, as he stands in the doorway, I realise how similar they look.

He makes a face. "You're an idiot, you know that?"

I nod.

"Well, you're an idiot who happens to be my friend, so I'm sort of obliged to say good luck. Not that luck is really what you need. I mean, what you need really is to not be stupid. Yeah. I mean, dude, you're not an idiot, just try not to die, okay? That would suck."

I open my mouth to speak, and he's already gone.

47 minutes.

My parents are next. The part I've been dreading. My dad is silent and about a minute away from crying. My mother is less reserved.

"You're an idiot. Can't you just let it be? This isn't some stupid little thing you can back out of. You've gotten yourself in far too deep. If you die because you thought it would be a good idea to just _decide_ to volunteer, then I don't know what we'll do. Dammit, why did you have to volunteer…"

I sit on the couch throughout the whole thing. There are tears in my mother's eyes, but I can't tell whether she's actually upset or whether she's still too mad at me. My father silently presses a bronze coin into the palm of my hand. It's a family heirloom, from his father. I have no idea where it came from or even what it means, but if I'm allowed one thing from home, it may as well be this.

I'm left sitting in the room, with half an hour to go, and no more visitors. Next door, the sounds of creaking floorboards is gone – Lerna, whoever she is, has none either.

The door creaks open, and shakes me from a daze. I stand up, reluctant to leave the soft velvet of the armchair.

"Corvus, you idiot, what the hell do you think you were doing?"

"Cara, you do realise you're like the fifth person to ask me that today?"

Her expression softens. "Well, it's a little true. But seriously. Try not to die. Although I'd expect I'm the fifth person to tell you that too."

"Yeah."

She wraps her arms around me, drawing me into a tight hum. Goddamn, she's strong.

"Please. Just…" She breaks off, holding me at arm's length. "Well, Friday History lectures would be awfully boring without you. So you've got to come back and save me from the boredom."

She smiles. "Well, I have to go. My parents'll be expecting me. I guess 'good luck' is chronically overused too, right?"

I smile back at her. "That it is, but it can't hurt."

"Well, good luck." She turns, the hem of her skirt spinning around after her, and she's gone.

29 minutes till they come for us, and all I have is empty air.


	7. District Four: Consolation

**A note from your author:**

**Aaaaaaaaaand here we go to the lovely District Four. Don't mind the slightly fishy smell.**

**This tribute came to me via the lovely Doc (Generation Nothing). Sorry this took so long. My usual excuses apply (or rather don't).**

**Anyway, the show must go on, let's get at it!**

**~Madeleine**

* * *

><p><em>Caspia Azzura, Fourteen years, District Four<em>

The morning of the reaping, the district is quiet, and our wooden house creaks around us, already moving in the heat of the summer morning.

I retrieve the sheet from the floor, where I've thrown it off. It's a hot summer, and despite being in the coolest room of the house, it was stuffy during the night. The sheet on the ground doesn't match the worn one stretched over the mattress - it's clean and white while the one I slept on is faded blue.

I'd like to have slept in, but it's never going to happen. I have to get ready, plus the walk to the square takes a while. Along with nerves, that pretty much shoots the whole "sleeping in" thing dead.

Besides, my mother and I both need to eat, and sitting in bed feeling sorry for myself won't do anything. That's the idea, anyway. Keep putting one foot in front of the other, or some crap like that.

I boil the kettle, and take the moment to run a brush through my hair. I washed it last night, and went to bed with it damp. It's dried funny, and the brush snags on knots and tangles as I stare into the single mirror in the house, ignoring the jagged crack down the middle and the spiderweb fractures that turn much of my face into a mass of reflected snippets.

I take the kettle off the heat and scoop a spoonful of herbal tea from the tin on the countertop. Even when the weather's hot, my mother loves tea. Mostly she makes it herself. That's what she does. If you need it, she'll sit you down and make you a cup of tea. People always ask her what help tea does; she tells them that it doesn't do anything. It puts something in your hands and keeps your mind somewhere else for a while.

Sometimes that's enough.

I let the tea infuse for a few minutes. In the other room, I can hear her stirring. The floor creaks slightly, wooden floorboards shifting under the mattress. The house is old, older than living memory, and, like most of the houses out here, older than all the buildings in town. It was here before all that, before this place was even District 4.

It's a strange feeling, living somewhere that so many other people have lived. Know that the very wood the house is made of is soaked in their lives as well as yours. So much has passed outside the wooden walls, so much you'll never see. It's disconcerting, really.

The tea finishes infusing, and I mix a spoonful of honey in. A little luxury on this day won't go astray. It's traditional, really, to celebrate today. To give eachother presents.

A spoonful of honey in a cup of tea is enough for us.

I bought the tea only a week ago, from Nyssa the apothecary woman's daughter. She told me it was "calming" and I start to wonder whether it's a ploy for sales – right about now, a little calm is a good thing.

I remind myself of the career girls, with full bellies and muscled arms and looks and talent and fearlessness. They'd volunteer to take my place, not out of any sympathy, but out of greed for glory.

Volunteers are rarer these days, my negative side reminds me. The last few years, everyone seems to love a good outer-district winner. An underdog, an unlikely champion. It pulls views, I guess, in the Capitol, where of course the ratings are everything. Things seem to end badly for Career tributes lately. For the sake of the show, of course.

It doesn't help thinking like that. It doesn't help _anything_, I remind myself. Anything at all. You can't worry about anything you can't control because there's no _point_.

Doesn't mean I listen to my own advice.

I take the tea into my mother's room, and find her sitting in the old window seat, on the threadbare cushion.

"I made you tea," I say quietly, setting it down on the ledge. She glances up at me, gratitude blooming in her eyes. Today is not a good day. Today every adult feels the pain of the debt they own their children, and fear that the tesserae on which they survive will instead bring death.

"Thank you."

I take the photo frame from her hands, encountering no resistance, and set it back on the sill. The photo behind the grimy glass is old, evidenced by the fact that I'm about six in it, sitting for an official photo but cheerful despite the fact.

My current identification photo is much less so. Taken only a year ago, my hair is greasy and sits limp around my shoulders, the colour of dirt. Somewhere my mother's card has a picture of her twenty-year-old self printed on it, wistful, blonde and beautiful.

I take after my father more than her, I think. But I don't know anymore. There are no photos of him in the house, and all I have are memories.

They're good memories, but they're just memories.

He taught me how to catch a fish, how to tie a knot, how the use a fishhook without impaling yourself. How to get past the Peacekeepers and go upstream to catch fish when all of your catch gets taken to market and you can't afford to buy it back.

He taught me how to survive.

My line and reel are under the floorboards, hidden in the case of an inspection, but I'm not going up the creek today. Today's the reaping.

I heat some water, and have a bath, quickly washing off the dirt and sweat that seems to accumulate so quickly in summer. The dress I have laid out for the reaping is nothing special, just the newest and least worn of my regular dresses, blue with a faintly floral pattern. My mother makes them herself. She does laundry as well, mends people's clothes, makes dresses.

And tea. She makes people tea.

She used to do odd jobs, fixing things, painting fences, the like. But now nobody really cares. When there's no money to buy food, who cares about the state of your house? And the richer folks in town don't like having desperate people around their houses. Who knows what goes missing.

So she sews and does laundry and she fixes people, now.

I button up the dress. The buttons are reused, taken off one of the dresses that I wore through about a year ago. I stand in front of the cracked, dirty mirror, and twirl back and forth. Got to look nice for your Capitol, after all.

Breakfast is the usual greyish grain porridge we usually eat, but with slices of melon on top. A bit of a treat for reaping day.

I wash my bowl out in the sink, the pipes clunking and groaning for a second before water spurts out.

"Wait, Cas, I'll do that," she says quickly. "Here." She takes the bowl from me.

"You've grown up so much, you know that, right? I'm so –" she swallows. "so proud of you, okay? And you look lovely."

I smile. "Thanks."

* * *

><p>The walk into town is a long one, given how far out our house is. You can either walk down to the beach and wander along, which is what I'd do most days, or you can go through the market first, then along the main road.<p>

The market is all packed up today, though, because there's no trading. The fish market in town will be the same, and the shops. Today's a day off for most people.

A pickup pulls up alongside us, and the driver calls out to my mother. "Marina, you fancy a ride into town?"

It's Aaron Oakley, a middle-aged guy with scruffy facial hair, one of my dad's old friends. In the back of the pickup is his son, Shea, and Bryn and Nyssa, the apothecary woman and her daughter.

"Sure we'll fit?" my mother asks jokingly.

"Sure thing, love. She's a fine old thing, this here truck. Older'n me, and tougher too. Hop right up."

Bryn puts down the tailgate, and we clamber in. Shea grabs my arm, steadying me.

"Careful. Nice dress, by the way."

Any other day, any other boy, I would have smiled, made a smart remark. But this is Shea Oakley, and today is reaping day. My head's not in the game.

"Uh, thanks," I murmur, sitting on an upturned plastic crate in the back of the pickup, which starts with a clunk and a rattle. I believe Aaron when he says it's older than him, but I can't be sure about how tough it is. It's survived this long, I guess.

We rattle along the main road into town, past a succession of houses, shops, the special climate-controlled warehouse, then the fancier part of town. A few block from the square, we pull over. The Peacekeepers always close the streets off, foot traffic only.

The tailgate takes a few attempts to put down. Shea kicks it a couple of times, to his father's indignation.

"You'll damage it, Shea, and so help me-"

"Dad, honestly, if it could be damaged by people kicking it it would have fallen apart ten years ago."

We clamber out, onto the sun-baked pavement that's not changed since I was old enough to notice the cracks and tiny plants pushing through gaps in the concrete. I can feel the heat of the sidewalk through my thin sandals, and I half wish I had some sturdier shoes. Then again, after an hour standing in the square, my feet would stink. This is better.

Shea and I wander down the main street, surrounded by other kids and adults going the same way. It's heating up already, even though it's only about a quarter to ten. It'll be blistering by midday. I just hope there's not another heatwave coming. They never bode well. People just bake in their houses, with the evening bringing no relief. Little kids, old people who nobody remembers to check on, people who nobody considers, they're the victims. They're never a pretty sight when somebody does think to see how they are.

It's been almost two years since the last bad one. It's burned into our minds, the images of that summer. It makes me shudder thinking about it.

Shea and I line up behind a pockmarked kid of maybe thirteen, his hair falling in dirty blonde streamers to his shoulders. As the line approaches the Peacekeeper taking names. He seizes the boy's hand, asking his name.

"A-Archie Laguna, sir. Wha-what's that?"

"New procedure," the Peacekeeper says bluntly. "They're testing it out."

He fits a stubby, silver needle to the black device in his hand, pricking the boy's finger.

The kid squeals, and the device lights up, the name "Laguna, Archie Francis" flashing up.

"Now get," the Peacekeeper snaps at the boy, who's now clutching his hand. An exaggeration, surely. It must just be a pinprick –

"Next."

"Caspia Azzura," I say, trying to infuse my voice with confidence.

The Peacekeeper grabs my hand, fits a new needle, and pricks my pointer finger.

I jerk my hand away from the sudden, sharp pain. A drop of blood wells at the tip of my finger. I glance at the display, which is displaying "Azzura, Caspia Jai, F, 14yrs". There's a list of numbers or something under it, which I can't read properly. Abruptly, the Peacekeeper jerks his head in the direction of a group of other kids.

"Move along."

I turn back to Shea. "It doesn't hurt much, just a prick-"

"Move _along_, please."

I get swept up in a bunch of kids I vaguely recognise from school, none that live near me or that I'm friends with. I eventually file into where the fourteen-year-olds are gathered, next to a tall girl with impressively big hair. A lot of the kids are taller than me. I'm not exactly short, but lately everyone seems bigger. Then again, plenty of those kids live in town. Naturally they're bigger.

I get a couple of sneers from a couple of well-off girls in practically identical teal dresses. Here, in the centre of town, I'm an outcast. Worse than invisible, I'm what people look down on. "Those out-of-town rats", they call us at school, us kids with holes worn through the knees of our trousers, for whom even the cheap grey mush at the cafeteria is an expense that can be spared.

At school, you can tell which kids are Career tributes. They're the ones in the gymnasium at breaks, the ones that act rowdy in classes, the ones who give approximately zero fucks about school – after all, what use is math when what you really want to know is how to throw a knife or a perfect punch. They're rarer these days, with things so bad for Careers in the Games, and with the shortages, fewer people can afford to train. There are still a few, though, enough that our tributes today will almost certainly be Careers. Whoever's reaped will almost certainly have to avoid being knocked down as two or more beefy kids brawl it out for the supposed honour of representing our district.

There are always cheers, people chanting for their favourite. Whoever's left standing gets to go, pretty much. People have died.

The escort, some new lady, is already on stage. She's quite young, relatively unmodified, especially compared the outrageous guy we used to get, whose hair was always geometric in shape (a pyramid last year, the year before that a perfect sphere), and whose skin was deep blue in colour. His voice was at least an octave higher than this new one.

"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, what a lovely day it is, right?"

Already she sounds irritating. Unfortunately, given we're a relatively well-off (ha!) district, she's not likely to be promoted for a _long _time. I wonder whether they've moved her up from five or six. I don't remember seeing her on television, and she looks pretty young, with white-blonde hair coiled around her head, elegant facial features untouched by modification – but then again, who can really tell? She might be thirty-five, forty. Maybe she's had plastic surgery to look younger. The old escort obviously had, but he still looked old.

"I'm Jacinth, everyone, and it's so _wonderful_ to be here!"

It's at that point that I decide I really, really don't want to listen to her. Her voice is irritating as hell, and if I just stop listening, maybe it'll be over quicker.

But she chatters on, introducing our nine previous victors, ranging from a withered old woman to younger men and women. They sit in chairs on the stage, next to the Mayor and two senior councillors, with one chair spare for Jacinth, in case she decides to stop yabbering and sit down.

The screens either side of the stage fade to black from the list of prior victors, cutting to live footage of Jacinth trotting over to one of two enormous glass balls in her ridiculous orange boots.

She mixes the sealed slips of paper around, the rustling audible over the microphone. She pauses, indecisive, then draws out a single slip.

Jacinth clears her throat, a pathetic little sound, then chirps, "Caspia Azzura."

It's not possible. Or if it is, it's unlikely. My name was in there what, nine times? Of all the slips, of all the goddamn slips for her to pull out, it had to be mine…

I trudge toward the stage, waiting to be inevitably knocked down, hit, kicked into the ground by some vicious girl desperate for a place. Every sound makes me wince, sure it'll be a shout, a deranged screech, preceding an attack.

But it doesn't come. I walk up to the stage, Jacinth chattering over the speakers, drilling into my ears. Even as I walk towards the stage, betters in the Capitol, even here at the edges of the crowd, are evaluating my ability to not die.

I climb the stairs, Jacinth gesturing for me to hurry up, to come show my face to the district, to the whole _country_. I feel an overwhelming impulse to run, to hide, to escape.

Jacinth places her hand on my arm, and I jerk it away, acting on instinct. I'm a scared animal, caught in a trap I can't possibly escape. I catch a glimpse of myself on one of the huge screens: I look terrified, my hair messy, a depressing change from the usual show they get. Jacinth herself looks disappointed that her first time out has been so far boring. The audience expects excitement, a brawl or at least a volunteer.

Instead, they've got me, a skinny fourteen-year-old girl, out-of-town vermin. Nothing worth supporting.

I scan the crowd, searching out my mother, Nyssa, Shea, any friendly face. All I can see is distaste. The town kids seem almost disgusted that I'm their representative. Among them are people I know were training for the Games. Why don't they volunteer? Surely that's what they want. The last few years have been hard, sure, but they'd have more chance than me, surely.

I guess charity isn't exactly on their minds.

Jacinth clasps the stand of the microphone, chattering something about courage and how the reaping is a time for healing, some bullshit that she's obviously memorised. She's sticking religiously to a schedule, taking cues from a guy I couldn't see from the crowd, who's on the camera scaffold opposite. He keeps checking his watch and typing something into a computer. Most likely he's managing the broadcast. I've never considered, really, the logistics of putting up TV cameras and a temporary stage, wiring the microphone and the cameras and broadcasting everything live. Around the square, techs dressed in identical uniforms point camera rigs directly at me, at the crowd, searching for drama.

It's a show for the Capitol, after all.

Jacinth trots over the second glass ball to draw out the name of the boy who will be both my partner and my rival. If the boys are anything like the girls, that is.

She draws out a slip with a little more haste than before, on cue from the man sitting across the square. She unfolds it and speaks directly into the microphone, with a little less verve than when she first started, "Fern-"

"I volunteer!"

There's movement at the back of the boys. A seventeen- or eighteen-year-old, then.

A tallish boy pushes out of the ranks of teenagers cramped into the roped-off area. He's bulky, with dark blonde hair that's pulled back in a short ponytail. A Career, by the look of him. He doesn't tend to participate in the joking around, at school, as far as I can remember. Then again, he's older, he might be in the other lunch period.

His fists are held in front of his chest in fists. He's expecting to have to fight for it, but nobody else seems to have reacted. I wonder how many of them can possibly be called Fern, of all things.

He strides up to the stage, taking the steps in leaps. As he walks toward Jacinth, I notice how much taller than me he is.

I don't have a chance.

Jacinth is grinning at him. "Hello there. What would your name be?"

He grabs the microphone, and says. "Barron Rawson."

Jacinth takes the microphone back from him. "Well, that's lovely. Let's have a hand for our two tributes this year!"

There's clapping, scattered cheers. I still can't see my mother, but Shea and Nyssa both look horrified.

Even they know that I'm dead already.

* * *

><p>The goodbyes room is musty from not being used for a year. I sit on the edge of a chair, kicking my feet back and forward.<p>

Surely my mother should be coming. I've got an hour to say goodbyes, surely she'd come. Surely.

The door opens, and it's not my mother but Nyssa who enters, escorted by a Peacekeeper. "Three minutes," he says gruffly.

She throws her arms around me. "It's going to be fine, right?" she asks. "You. You're going to be fine. You can get food. You can use a spear, Cas."

"Nyssa," I begin softly, before realising that really there isn't anything I can say. She knows just as well as me that I'm dead. She's reassuring me rather than herself. "Nyssa, make sure my mother's okay. You and Shea, you have to take her food, okay?"

"Okay," she says, thickly. She's trying not to cry, something I appreciate. The last thing I need is to break down, to appear weak.

"I should go," she says. "Uh…bye, I guess."

I nod. "Bye, Nyssa."

She closes the door after herself, and I sink back onto the chair.

It's half an hour before my mother visits me. Who knows what she's been doing, but she's crying, not even bothering to hide it, when she opens the door. She wraps me up in a hug, weeping.

"Cas," she says, between choking sobs. "Cas, I love you so much, okay? I love you. And I want you to – I want you to think of me. You're my daughter, my beautiful brave grown-up daughter, yes? Remember, please. Please."

"Okay," I say, holding back tears. I can't cry in front of her. That's not fair. I'm not the one losing a daughter. She is.

"Shea and Nyssa are going to bring you food, okay, if there isn't enough. It's going to be fine. You're going to be fine."

"They can't just take you! They can't. It's not fair…"

"I know, okay. I know! It's not fair, but you can't fall apart, okay? You _can't_. You have to hold it together. For me. Please."

She nods.

The door opens. "Time's up," the Peacekeeper says.

"Cas! I love you, Cas, okay! Please come back, baby, please, I can't lose you - "

"It's going to be fine! I promise it's going to be fine…"

The door slams shut.

I crumple, head in hands. Tears come, now, burning on my face. It isn't fair, it's not fair it's not fair it's not fucking _fair_ –

The door opens again. I look up, tears still drying on my face. "_Shea_?"

"Hi, Caspia," he says, awkwardly. "You…you okay?"

I wipe my nose. "Yeah, just – just fine, thanks."

"I guess I came to wish you good luck, you know," he mumbles. "And, um, the guy who volunteered, Barron, he's a bit of an asshole, so I'd really kind of prefer if you won, right?"

I giggle. _Giggle_. What am I, eleven?

"Well, I'll have a shot," I say, standing up. "You know, they don't seem so keen on Careers these days…"

"Yeah," he says, smiling. "Well, I guess that's it, but uh, one more thing –"

And with that, he places a quick kiss on my cheek.

I can feel myself blushing. It's a dumb reaction, even worse than giggling, really, and he smiles. "Well, good luck."

"Thanks," I mumble, as he walks toward the door.

"Sorry, what?"

"Thankyou. For the good luck. And, uh, the other thing was kind of awesome too."

He grins. "Glad to be of service."


End file.
